


Making a Whole Person

by AshVee



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Like melting of the icecaps slowburn, M/M, Multi, Real slowburn, The author doesn't understand tags, Tony Stark has a tech-kink, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 06:53:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4050436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshVee/pseuds/AshVee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>HYDRA and SHIELD are both in the wind, trying to draw their strengths back to them. For SHIELD, that meant it's agents, the intelligence and anonymity. For HYDRA, it wasn't much different. There had always been a way to draw the Soldier back home, even if Bucky Barnes didn't want to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What I Know

**Author's Note:**

> There is an OC in this, though they don't appear until like...chapter four and won't be involved with any main characters.

Chapter One: What I Know

Tony Stark wasn’t someone that Bucky Barnes would have liked if he’d run into him on the street, at least not post Winter Soldier. Not that that really said too much, as most people weren’t on the top of his to-see list post Winter Soldier. 

So, when he stood in front of an exhibit that detailed nearly everything about the life of Bucky Barnes until his fabricated death, he was a more than a little shocked to find the eccentric billionaire standing before him with an odd little smirk quirking the corner of his lips and a pair of sunglasses in place despite the dull museum lighting. 

Barnes didn’t pay him much attention, just kept his head down and his collar up and read. And read. And read. Until what he was reading felt more like a memory and less like and less like an informative sermon that he was sure his Ma might have given. If he could remember his Ma. 

It wasn’t really remembering if you read about it often enough for it to ache in your skull, but it was the closest thing he could get. After the fall of both HYDRA and SHIELD, the Winter Solider had been in the wind. Under normal circumstances, it was his duty to return after the completion of an assignment. He’d never failed—to his memory—so never before had he done anything else beside returning to base. 

Pulling his target from the Hudson did not align with his command, but he did it anyway because when he looked down at the blonde-headed man, beaten bloody and staring up at him, he knew him. He knew him like you knew your own teeth, like you knew feel of your clothes. There were so few things that the Winter Soldier knew that way, that intimately, that he’d done something that—to his memory—he’d never done before: he disobeyed. 

Sure, there had been times he’d been punished for various grievances. Too much collateral damage, a life taken not in the way it was commanded to be. Such things happened, and in those times, he was punished, but he had never disobeyed so directly before. Of course, if he had...well, there was an entire world of things he didn’t know. Anything could fit into the gaps in his memory. Even failure. Even disobedience. 

Which is why he was entirely sure he wasn’t sure if he knew the billionaire from more than the cover of different magazines he’d seen on newspaper stands. The man stood there, reading right along with him, that odd little smirk never leaving his mouth. Something bothered Bucky—because that was what the man had called him, and that was what felt right—about that smirk. Even as he looked at the stills of himself from back in the day, black and white and wearing rough and tumble commando gear and wearing that same infuriating smirk, he felt ill at ease. He wasn’t sure if it was the fact that his own face set the Winter Solder on edge or if seeing such a similar expression on himself that made him anxious. 

Maybe that was what bothered him about it. Maybe it was too familiar, too much like something he should have been, could have been, was until some jackass with too much curiosity and the money to back it changed him. The first thing the Winter Soldier had done after his act of disobedience had been to read everything he could lay his eyes upon. It was a considerable amount of information, and it told him that he’d not always been the Asset. Maybe it was the proof in front of him that made him nervous. 

Except that wasn’t fair, not really, and it didn’t really ring true in his own mind, a mind that was starting to be capable of more than following commands. He stood there for a good long while before he figured out what it was that infuriated him. 

It was a lie. 

The upturning of lips to hide the downturn. The smile to hide the tears. That was what that smirk signified, and it was a lie. It was a damn good lie, given that the Soldier didn’t scream saboteur in his head the first second he saw it there. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked finally, because even Bucky Barnes, under cover and confused as hell, could identify when someone was there for him and not just happenstance. 

“Figured this was where you’d be. Felt a bit choked up when Cap didn’t call in the big gun reinforcements to help with you, but he’s always been a take charge and get it done himself type of guy.” 

Bucky startled himself when he laughed, not because he hadn’t in so long but because he knew the other man was right. He knew. Captain America was a take charge kind of guy if he’d ever seen one, but it felt deeper than that, more personal. Bucky stared up at his own face, a face that he recognized but didn’t, and realized why. 

Steve was like that. Not Captain America, not the man in the suit. Steve, the man that the exhibits claimed was the best friend to James Buchannon Barnes. Scrawny and scowling and so very self-sacrificing. Bucky bit the inside of his cheek until the hot tang of copper blossomed on his tongue. He didn’t remember, but he knew. 

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Bucky said. He didn’t know why, and he certainly hadn’t made the conscious decision to let Captain America live until that very moment. Previously, he’d just been delaying, gathering intel, and trying to make his own decisions. 

“All well and good, but I’m not here for that,” Stark said, shifting his attention formally away from the display and toward Bucky. 

He was an imposing figure despite everything that should have made him otherwise. In the tabloids, he was always wearing a suit, something well cut and flashy with his hair perfectly arranged and that billion dollar smile in place. That man should have been intimidating but wasn’t. 

This one, with his hair a mess from running his fingers through it, jeans torn at the knee and worn to a pale blue and a black ACDC t=shirt stained with something at the hemline, he shouldn’t have been much to consider. Except he was. There was an easy confidence there. None of the flash for the tabloids, none of the look at me posturing. 

He kept his hands in his pockets, and Bucky could just see two small metal bands around both of his wrists, not the kind of jewelry a Fortune 500 company owner would wear around. Brushed steel with a small green light disappearing into the jean pockets. 

“I’m here to offer you a home,” Stark said, his smirk turning into a frown as if the words tasted bad. “Well, it’s really not a home yet, but we’re working on it.” 

“Do I look like I need a home?” Bucky asked. Charity had annoyed him since before, that much he was certain about. It burned him now. He felt something ease in his stomach at the realization that while HYDRA had wiped everything of the before away, they couldn’t change some of his baser instincts. 

“Honestly? Yes.” The words were so quick and firm that they made Bucky stab viciously at his injured cheek with his tongue. “Not that that’s what I’m really offering, yet.” 

“Then what are you offering?” He turned away from the exhibit. The man was staring at the screens again, but it was clear where his attention was at. Things were sideways in Bucky’s head, but they seemed to be just a bit skewed in Stark’s as well.

“An apartment, a floor really. Full kitchen, bathroom, utilities included for the low, low price of making sure Captain America remembers to eat and sleep.” 

“I’m not what you want in a babysitter.” 

“Well, that’s good, because I’m not asking for a babysitting. I’m asking for a Steve sitter, and the best person I could think of to do that job was you.” 

“I’m not Bucky Barnes.” 

“You’re the closest thing we’ve got.” Stark paused, turning his attention back to the exhibit, his forehead crinkling just slightly as if he was working through a problem he wasn’t aware existed until that moment. “And I don’t think you’re as far off as you might think.” 

Something warm and pleased gurgled in his belly at that. He didn’t remember the man up in that photo. He didn’t remember any of the men around him either, but he knew he wanted to, if only because it was taken from him. 

“How am I supposed to mother a grown man?” 

“You let him remind you,” Stark said, reaching up and snagging those sunglasses from his face. Beneath them were dark, tired eyes with deep bruises beneath. His forehead had gone lax though, as if his mind had processed whatever had caught it’s attention. 

“You look like you could use your own reminder,” Bucky said. He did need a place to stay. He needed clothes that fit him. He needed someone to remember that he wasn’t the Asset before. His shoulder gave a great, arching twinge for a moment, and he considered checking to make sure the sparking from the gizmos hadn’t caught the stolen jacket on fire. 

“It’s a full time job, being awesome,” Stark said with none of the confidence in his voice to back it up. “It’s also a full time job making sure that the team you put together stays together when the individual members need help.” 

“And that’s your job.”

“We all have our crosses to bear,” Stark said, that smirk sliding back into place like a glove. Without the glasses, it looked more wrong, more end of the line tired. “Mine comes with fewer wooden nails and more emotionally scarred super heros that can’t seem to keep themselves out of trouble.” 

“And you think bringing the Winter Soldier in is going to keep them from jumping off of rooftops,” Bucky said. Even as he argued the point, he wanted to be outmatched, outwitted. He wanted a home. 

“No. I think bringing you in is going to give me one more emotionally stunted bag-of-cats crazy jackass to worry about, but at least Cap’ll stop looking so damn ruined.” And wasn’t that a kick in the head? Because Barnes? That version of himself that lived the Howling Commandos and stared at him out from that museum exhibit, that man would have ached to hear that. He could feel the shadow of that emotion somewhere in his chest. 

His body knew what his mind didn’t, he supposed.

“If I refuse?” 

“I don’t take refusals. I just keep making offers. I’m prepared to go as high as your own gym, but that’s my final offer.”

“You got something between a gym and an apartment?” he asked, just because he wasn’t ready to agree, not so easily. 

“SHIELD’s gone. HYDRA’s gone. There’s just you now, out in the cold. The US government will be coming down on a lot of heads, and if I could find you...well, there’re spies out there who might not be geniuses but could find where the Winter Soldier might hole up.” 

“You didn’t look where the Winter Soldier would go,” Barnes said, the thought settling in his head for the first time.” 

“Because I wasn’t looking for the Winter Soldier,” Stark said, nodding his head in agreement. “Winter Soldier does me no good. James Barnes, biffles with Steve Rogers? He’s a guy I want to watch Cap’s back.” 

“I’m not James Barnes, and Steve’s big enough to watch his own back.” He could remember that man, on the helicarrier, fighting against him, working for what needed to be done. That man was more than capable. 

“Stepped out in front of a car two days ago” Stark said. “Shattered his tibia and fibula in both legs. He’ll be up and about as early as today like it never happened, but next time? What if it’s a semi on the interstate?”

“Never was very good at watching his own ass.” That was something else Bucky just knew but couldn’t explain how. He couldn’t give examples or site references, but he knew in his bones.

“If you weren’t James Barnes, you wouldn’t know that,” Stark said, that smirk slipping into a genuine smile. “He’s been looking for you. Between SHIELD and the government breathing down his neck for answers, the man hasn’t slept in weeks. I’m all about insomnia and getting shit done, but he’s not as good at it as I am. Can’t really blame him; no one is.” The last two statements were for show, Bucky knew, pomp to cover up genuine feeling. 

“You don’t look much better than I imagine he does.” 

“I’m not a caring a sharing kind of guy, Barnes. I’m the shut up and get shit done kind of guy. If Cap’s knocking holes in my punching bags, I design a stronger polymer. If Natasha’s nursing a broken ankle because her Bites didn’t take out a man the size of a bull, I make the current stronger. If Barton’s up staring out at the city from my rooftop because he can’t stand thinking about the weight of the things he did both before and after Loki, I get him plastered and dump him in his bed to sleep it off.” Stark shrugged one shoulder carelessly. It made Bucky angry, that shrug, but he couldn’t place why. 

“And what happens when you look like you might fall over?” Because the billionaire did look the part, from the way he seemed to have to brace his knees to not sway and the darkness to his eyes, he looked exhausted. 

“Coffee happens,” Stark said easily, waving off the question with that CNN smile and a step forward. It was meant to look like an aggressive devil-may-care gesture, but even the whisperings of the Soldier in his mind knew it for what it was. 

“Are all of your house guests going to want a killer under their roof?” 

“Barton and Romanov have killed more people between them than I want to think about. Banner’s accidents with Big Green would probably put you to shame. Thor thinks that death in battle is a glorious thing, and I build weapons of mass destruction for most of my life.” Stark took a deep breath, and Bucky recognized it for what it was: the hardening of a backbone. “Whatever demon you’ve got sitting on your shoulder, at least you didn’t put them there yourself.” 

   
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Barnes asked, something hot sparking in his stomach. This was a bad idea, he knew. He’d been more edgy since Stark started speaking than he’d been since he pulled the Captain from the Hudson. 

“No,” Stark said, and the simplicity of it doused his anger. His next set it kindling again as they came fast and sharp. “It’s supposed to piss you off, put a chip on your shoulder as big as the one Cap’s got because HYDRA did this to you. HYDRA made you into something you never wanted to be, took you from your life and threw you into this one. It’s supposed to piss you off enough that you’ll want to defy everything they ever told you because nothing will ever make it better. You’ll never have that life back, but you’ll learn to deal, if you come back with me to Avengers Tower.”

“I can tell you no?” Bucky asked. That was important, he realized. His answer would mean everything. The Soldier could never tell HYDRA no, never make his own decisions.

“Yes,” Stark said. “That doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying to convince you.” 

“And I can leave.” 

“I’m not running a prison, Barnes.” Stark scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t have the time or man power to keep you locked up if you want to go. You come under your own power. You leave under your own power.” 

Something in him relaxed at that, felt more at peace and content than Bucky ever remembered feeling. The man in front of him had stopped playing a role, stopped trying to pretend he was something more than he was. Billionaire. Genius. Playboy. Philanthropist. The Soldier had heard audio clips of the argument. In front of him stood only three of those things, and the fourth, he figured, he might see later. It was the second that stuck in his mind at that moment, though. 

“I’ve got one more request.” He winced as another spark seized up the rotors in his elbow.

“Want, want, want,” Stark said, but there was no bite to his tone. 

“You think you can take a look at this?” Bucky raised his left arm slightly, making an awkward fish where the second and third metal fingers didn’t quite smooth out the way they should. The elbow snapped and popped, the plates not shifting into place properly. 

A true smile fell across the billionaire’s lips for the first time.

“I thought you’d never ask.”


	2. Full House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the three people that left kudos! I appreciate it! This chapter is a bit slower than I'd like and I'm not entirely sure I like it, so it might be edited later, but let me know your thoughts.

Chapter Two: Full House

Tony wasn’t a warm and fuzzy type of guy. He preferred to silently acknowledge his feelings with a glass of vodka and a gift of engineering genius. After the Big Damn Invasion—and no, thank you, he wasn’t too much of a Browncoat—everyone had scattered. They’d been that way for three years until the Winter Soldier and HYDRA and the fall of SHIELD. 

Romanov was the first to show up. Or really, the first to be tracked down, because Tony wasn’t a moron and there were hundreds of men and women who had nowhere else to go after SHIELD fell. Most of them, he couldn’t bring himself to care about, but Natasha Romanov was his angry Russian hobo, damn it. 

So, he’d used a fraction of his resources and hacked the international airports. He only had to wait a week before she came up. The flight she’d gotten out of La Guardia had been grounded with a phone call. Well, a phone call and the threat of Iron Man flying into restricted airspace. He’d plucked her from the tarmac and deposited her in one of the rooms of the tower. 

She’d been tired and irritable, but after twelve hours of sleep and a shower, she’d made him dinner and the pair shared a bottle of vodka. That, as they say, had been that. She’d been living there for a week when Barton came in from Montevideo Uruguay.  He’d been on a mission when SHIELD had fallen, and while he was a sharp mind and eye, he wasn’t sued to finding his own way with little money and no contacts. It took him two weeks of threats and hitchhiking before he made the United States. With little to nowhere else to go, he walked through the front door of Stark Tower and asked to speak with Iron Man. 

Barton lived two floors below Stark and on the same level as Natasha.

The Captain didn’t come in at first. It took him a few days after Barton arrived, and then only because he had no money, a social security number that turned up a dead man and the confirmable education status of a Burger King employee. He’d been adamant that he’d pay his own way at first, but once it became clear that Steve couldn’t spend the interest off of one of Stark’s accounts if he tried, he became more at ease with spending the other man’s money. 

So, a month after the fall of pretty much everything, Tony found himself the proud papa bear of a full house. Banner had been intermittently occupying the floor below Tony’s since the Big Damn Invasion, and now that the world was in upheaval, he’d preferred to stay close to the only thing he’d called home. Natasha and Clint and Steve and Bruce. His team was all under one roof, so when the US government came knocking for both Natasha Romanov and Clint Barton, Captain America had scowled disappointedly, Bruce Banner had gone a bit green eyed, and Tony had flippantly suggested that he still had dual citizenship and would be more than happy to move his industry—and all the money, power and tech it brought—out of their hands. The name Romanov and Barton disappeared from the ledges and no one came knocking again. 

They were a team for the first time since the Chitauri, and it made something warm and fuzzy swell up in Tony’s stomach. Something that he threw himself into in the lab working on arrows and a better composite for Clint’s bow, more breathable material for Steve’s suit, pants that would stretch with the Hulk and Widow Bites for Natasha that hit like lightning—Thor tested, Black Widow approved. 

He rarely slept, rarely ate, and even more rarely managed to leave the Tower. After he’d started collecting the lost souls that were the Avengers, Pepper had more than a few words for him. It was one thing to design individual floors for the heros of the Big Damn Invasion.  It was another thing to track down the questionable characters involved in dumping helicarriers down onto unsuspecting citizens. She’d backed up everything and gone to Malibu, flying the private jet in when she needed to attend board meetings. They hadn’t spoken since he’d brought in Natasha.

So, maybe he was looking for a distraction. Maybe he was genuinely worried about the bags beneath Steve’s eyes. Either way, he started paying a little more attention. Or, rather, he had JARVIS start paying more attention, because he did not, as the kids were saying, have time for that. Some nights Clint never came in from the roof. Some days Natasha couldn’t look at herself in the mirror and ended up passed out drunk across the kitchen table. Anytime, day or night, if he wasn’t out running or showering or trying to help with the PR situation, Steve could be found in the gym. 

Tony had JARVIS start monitoring the caloric intake and sleep hours of everyone in the Tower, and while Tony’s total number was probably much less than anyone else’s, theirs were still startlingly low when compared to those of normal everyday people. So, he started finding reasons and excuses to fix problems. 

Clint had to forget, so Tony loaded him with greasy food and bad whiskey and dumped him into his bed. Natasha had to be sharp at all times, and so he built her better weapons and showed her the security footage and made sure she had Mother’s Milk at all times. 

Banner was easy, and he’d been the master of those distractions for so long that it was second nature to give him coffee and a new problem to solve. 

Steve though, didn’t seem to want any of the distractions. No, their Captain wanted the living, breathing body of the Winter Soldier safe within reach. He wanted his best friend, the fragment from his past that meant more to him than anything else ever could. And Tony? Tony couldn’t exactly just wave money at that, now could he?

So he did the same thing he’d done to find Natasha. He put his considerable energies into finding the Winter Soldier, and when that failed miserably, he did something different. He put everything into finding Bucky Barnes, lost little lamb in the woods trying to figure out who he was.

It wasn’t difficult after that, and Tony was startlingly pleased when the man he found not only had his own functioning mind, but agreed to come back to the tower under the stipulation that he didn’t have to go and could leave whenever the hell he pleased and that Tony would—and hadn’t Christmas come early?—take a look at fixing his arm. 

Tony was used to getting his way, but he wasn’t used to it happening so easily, so when he found himself sitting at his kitchen counter, a screw driver clenched between his teeth and a micro soldering iron poised delicately over a stray bit of tech in Barnes’s arm, he wasn’t sure what he’d done to earn that kind of karma. 

“What is that?” Barnes asked, peaking down over the metal of his bicep to the wrist where Tony was working. 

“You want the version you’re going to understand or what it actually is?” Tony had gotten used to speaking techy to the masses. 

“I am not a moron.” 

“But you’re not a genius or an engineer.” 

“Talk like I’m Fred Flinstone.” Bucky’s face was deadpan, devoid of any ire from the argument, and Tony couldn’t help but find that he liked the guy for it. 

“Someone’s been keeping up on their pop culture,” Tony said, biting back down on the screwdriver in concentration. “S’a short.” He spat the screwdriver out in annoyance as the little piece he was working on refused to cooperate. “You broke the pressure sensor in this at some point, and it’s sending a signal that isn’t being received.”

“So it’s busted,” Barnes said. 

“It’s busted,” Tony agreed. “Not beyond repair, though.” 

“At least part of me isn’t,” Bucky said. “When’s everyone going to be coming around?” And wasn’t that the whole reason the man had been darting his eyes to the door for the last ten minutes?

“I figured you’d want to at least get settled in, get this to stop sending off sparks every few—ow!—seconds,” Tony said with a shrug and a self satisfied smile. The little piece he’d been working on sat perfectly. He returned the armor plating with ginger fingers. “Plus it lets me figure out if you’re about to go bat-shit cra-cray before I bring in my team.” 

“The programming is still there,” Bucky said, staring down at the hand. He flexed the fingers. “I know what the Soldier should do, but...I know what I want to do. I know what I’m going to do. Without wiping away the parts of myself that keep coming to the surface, I know what I don’t want.”

“You want to see Steve?” Tony glanced up at the man, who simply set his jaw. They sat like that for a long quiet while. 

“If I don’t?” 

“I’ve got a floor you can hole up in until you’re ready, but this is common land. If you want to hide, we shouldn’t be sitting here.” Tony waited, watching the other man carefully.

“Yeah,” Barnes said. “Yeah, I want to see him.” 

“JARVIS?” 

“Captain Rogers is currently in the gym, Sir,” JARVIS said. Bucky glanced upward, toward the ceiling and then back down at Tony. 

“JARVIS is the Tower,” Tony said by way of explanation. “Nothing happens here he doesn’t know about, and he’ll talk to you if you talk to him. He’s great at listening. He’d got, what is it now J, six doctorates?”

“Seven, sir. You requested that I go through the course material for psychiatry after you—”

“Thanks, J; that’ll be enough of that.” Bucky glanced at the billionaire, almost startled by his quick silencing of the voice. 

“Would you like me to alert Captain Rogers that you request his presence in the kitchen?”

“Go ahead,” Tony said, sitting back down and taking the screwdriver up to remove the plating at Bucky’s elbow. “Give a shout when he’s on this floor, eh, J?” 

“Of course, Sir,” JARVIS said. “Might I suggest you not be soldering when the Captain arrives, Sir?”

“Because he doesn’t like the smell of melted metal?” 

“Because Captain Rogers might not take this news well. He has been in the gym for the last six hours. I am not sure if he is completely aware of his surroundings, Sir.” That seemed to gain the man’s attention, and he pushed the piece of armor back into place, sealing it up with almost obscene dexterity. 

“Stats, J?” He quickly turned off the iron and tucked the screwdriver into the lip of his jeans. 

“Last caloric intake was thirty hours ago. Last sleep longer than three hours was fifty-three hours ago. Heart rate 168 and dropping. Respirations twenty-five and dropping. Oxygen saturation was adequate at last contact with a sensor. Caloric balance is currently well into the danger zone.”

“What does all that mean?” Bucky asked, straightening in his seat and pulling his jacket back on. Hearing about Steve as though he was reading from a book was uncomfortable, especially with the way his mind seemed to know that Steve—the scrawny, younger Steve that missed too many meals—didn’t have far to go from his baseline before he was in the hospital. 

“It means that you’re going to talk to your old friend, let him make you a sandwich and convince him to eat, shower and then pass out before he skips the first two and goes to the last from a hypoglycemic episode.”

“Giving a shout, Sir,” JARVIS said moments before the elevator gave a soft ding. Tony saw Bucky tense at the sound, and he gave him his best playboy smile, one that Bucky found simultaneously enraging and relaxing. 

“He won’t see you until he’s in the doorway,” Tony offered. “You change your mind between now and when he’s standing there, and I’ll meet him in the hall and—”

“No,” Bucky said firmly, rising from his seat to stand in the middle of the kitchen, eyes trained on the doorway as if it held all of life’s answers.

A moment later, it might have, because Steve was standing in it and the pair of them were both tense and staring and so silent that even Tony felt like he was interrupting on a private moment. 

“Found your friend, Cap,” Tony said, breaking the silence three long minutes later. Neither man had moved except to breathe. “He could use a hot meal, a shower and a change of clothes if you’re up to the task.” 

“I don’t need someone—”

“I’ll do it,” Steve said, cutting off Bucky’s objection. “Buck?”

“You really shorten a nickname?” Bucky asked. It sounded right enough in Tony’s mind though, and it seemed to slip off of Steve’s tongue like it was a habit. 

“You never cared for it, but yeah,” Steve said, taking a step through the door. “You know who I am?” 

“I did some reading,” Bucky said, shrugging one shoulder. When Steve just looked confused, Tony felt the need to speak again. 

“Found him at an exhibit on the Howling Commandos.”

“I read for a long time,” Bucky said. “I learned a lot about who we were, what we did in the war.” 

“So you know who Captain America is,” Steve said, shoulders slumped. Tony wondered for a moment if the man was going to fall over. He looked like he could. 

“I read about some of our missions. Some reports, old news paper clippings.” Bucky shrugged. “I don’t remember, but then I don’t know how I know your old man was as mean as a rattle snake or that you used to come crawling through my window in the middle of winter because you couldn’t stop shivering in your own bed.”

“You remember me?” Steve’s entire world seemed to right itself. 

“I don’t remember anything,” Bucky said, voice unsure. “I know some things, but I don’t remember.” 

“What’s the difference?” Steve asked, forehead drawn up in confusion. 

“I know you came for me that first time,” Bucky said. And he knew that like he knew his own bones. 

“I let you fall,” Steve said. A heaviness seemed to take up along every inch of him. 

“You my Ma?” Bucky asked, and it felt right, the slightly lazy speech pattern, the way he let his weight sag onto one leg instead of the straight-backed parade rest he’d been in before. 

“No, Buck, I’m not yer Ma,” Steve said with a shake of his head. There was a slow smile coming to his lips, but it only served to make his cheeks more gaunt. 

“Sure as hell don’t cook like her, from the look of ya,” Bucky said, taking a few slow steps forward. “Still not looking after yourself, you stupid bastard.” 

In the next moment, Tony really was intruding because the pair of men were clinging to each other as if they might disappear, snotty tears running down Steve’s face and fine tremors wracking Bucky’s spine. 

Tony slipped from the stool silently, pleased with himself. 

His first stop was the assassin’s floor, and JARVIS lead him to their shared gym with quick precision. There was a range there, though a small one, and a sparring mat. For anything else, the pair would have to go to the main gym six floors down, but it served their purposes. 

“Don’t shoot,” he called as he opened the door, coming around it with both hands up in mock surrender. Hawkeye—because he was Hawkeye when he had a bow in his hand—was at his range, making a pin cushion of a human decoy—and hadn’t that been Tony’s best creation ever because who thought of posable human decoys?

An arrow whizzed between his thumb and pointer finger, embedding itself into the wall just as a bullet skimmed by his side between his elbow and chest. 

“You’re both adorable killing machines,” he said, inspecting his t-shirt for damage. Natasha was on the sparring mat, holding some kind of martial arts pose and holding the gun toward him without looking. Barton had another arrow drawn taught and was smirking against the kisser button. 

“What do you want, Stark?” Natasha asked, dropping her gun into its holster in a fluid move that drove her right into a quick maneuver to straighten. 

“I thought I’d tell you that our dysfunctional little creep show grew by a member.” 

“Didn’t hear Thor come in,” Natasha said, a scowl forming on her lips. 

“Hammer Time is still out in New Mexico.” Tony turned toward the wall, tugging on the arrow a few times to pull it free from the reinforced plaster. “Be more careful about shooting in here. The walls weren’t made for bullets. No stray projectiles other than in the range.” 

“Who’d you bring in?” Barton asked, settling his bow against the wall. The arrow had been removed and was tucked neatly back into his quiver. 

“James Barnes,” Tony said, eyes flickering to Natasha, who sighed once before pulling her handgun again. “No, you’re not going to kill him.”

“I’m going to kill you,” she said, taking a few quick steps forward. The gun remained safely at her side though, so Tony figured he was safe. 

“Barnes was the name of the HYDRA asset, right?” Clint asked. He’d a frown on his face, but he left his bow against the wall. “With HYDRA down for the count, his programming has probably—”

“Started breaking down,” Tony said. He played absently with the bracelet on his wrist. “Yeah, he wasn’t quite the killing machine I saw on the news.” 

“Is he stable enough to be here?” Natasha asked. He sharp eyes had caught him nervously spinning the sensors in his bracelets, and with a sigh, she holstered the gun. 

“Are any of us?” Tony asked. “Steve needs this.” 

“Look, I get the guy has problems, but...I know what it’s like to have someone play in your head. I know what it’s like to have that voice disappear and no one believes it wasn’t you that pulled the trigger.” He didn’t look at either of them as he spoke. Instead, he busied himself with removing his forearm guard and release glove. 

He’d long ago gotten over the looks from the SHIELD agents, Tony knew, but Hawkeye had gone on only solo missions prior to the helicarrier missions. It wasn’t that no one would work with him, it was that no one was comfortable with the idea, save Natasha. If Fury passed down the order, the other agents would work with him, but Clint preferred to have no one at his back than to have someone watching their own six instead of his. So, Clint had worked alone. 

Until SHIELD fell. Until Stark Tower had become Avengers Tower. Until Tony Stark got tired of watching the only things he cared about get beaten nearly beyond repair. None of the Avengers went out alone now. They stayed together, and they would stay together until the end of things if Tony could help it.

“I left them hugging it out in the kitchen, but it might do some good if the rest of us make mention that we know he’s here. Later, I mean. Don’t want to interrupt a hot Super Soldier make-out session.” Tony waggled his eyebrows, and both assassins recognized it for the defense mechanism that it was. “Maybe a group lunch tomorrow? Picnic in Central Park? We can paint each other’s toe nails and talk about our feelings?” 

“You don’t like picnics Stark,” Barton said, glancing toward Natasha. 

“I have a—”

“If everyone was to say have lunch around one tomorrow, we could all be there,” Clint said, cutting off Natasha’s attempt at disappearing. Tony nodded and retreated out the door, the arrow still grasped firmly in hand. He’d been able to hear the thing even before it passed so close to him, and he had an idea for minimizing the sound. It wasn’t the flash-bang of muzzle-fire, but if Tony could make their silent archer’s arrows more silent...well, maybe he was grasping at things to do.

Just like Bruce, who happened to be sitting in their shared R and D Candy Land when Tony got there. The physicist was leaning heavily over a series of calculations, his forehead scrunched up in that way that meant he’d run into a snag but wouldn’t ask for help. 

“You glaring those calculations into submission, Big Guy?” Tony asked, tapping on the table with the tips of his fingers. 

“Yes.” Bruce didn’t bother to look up. 

“Do you want me to—”

“No.” 

“Alright then.” Sometimes it was best to leave good ol’ Brucey to figure out his own forehead wrinkling problems. “One thing. Because I am respecting your asinine wish to not be surprised, and I expect full brownie points for this, we have a new guest at the Tower.” 

“I don’t care if Rhodey’s staying on your floor again, but thanks for the heads up, Tony.” It must have been a real challenging little puzzle he was working on, because he still didn’t look up from the pad of paper. 

“It’s not Rhodes.” Tony leaned down over table into the other man’s space. He let his presence linger for a few seconds. Three. Two. One.

“Please, Tony, I’ve been up for nearly forty-eight hours. I just want to finish this and get some sleep.” Tony had to admit that explained a few things. Whenever either of them were pushing two days without sleep, they became a touch testy. 

“The Winter Soldier is living on Steve’s floor. No, he’s not going to kill him. No, Natasha is not going to kill him. And yes, we are having a team lunch tomorrow at 1300 to welcome him into our little side-show.” 

“1pm?” Bruce asked, not even flinching. “What time is it now?” 

“Just after four, Doctor Banner,” JARVIS said after a pause. Bruce sighed, straightened up from his hunched position and rubbed at his back. That was all it took for Tony to reach out, flip the notepad around and change a line of work. The black ink stood out sharply from Bruce’s pencil scrawl, and it would be easy for the other man to find it tomorrow. 

“Did you have to do that?” 

“Did you want it to bother you for the rest of the night?” Tony held the tablet of paper up, taking a few steps back and toward the incinerator. “Because if you did, I can totally get rid of this. JARVIS, light me up, I’m going—”

The papers were snatched from his hands at Bruce made his way toward the door, presumably for sleep. Tony didn’t miss that he took the tablet with him. 

“Well, J, what’s on Papa’s To-Do list?”


	3. Exit the Sandman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone that had commented or left kudos on this! I can't say how much I appreciate it!

Chapter Three: Exit the Sandman 

Bucky wasn’t going to sleep. Not with the soft mattress at his back or the feel of silk pajamas against his legs. Not even with Steve two rooms away and more emotionally fatigued than he’d felt in...well, had he ever felt like this? 

He was sure that he had, at some point in the before that he couldn’t remember. So, instead, he stared out the window, eyeing the city below and the lights as they blinked in and out of existence. 

“Sergeant Barnes, if I may, there is hot tea in the kitchen on the communal floor, and both Captain Rogers and Agent Barton appear to be awake.” Bucky had gotten used to JARVIS nearly immediately. It was just like having a com in his ear except JARVIS tended to command less and suggest more. 

“Steve alright?” he asked. The fear that raced through his veins each time Steve was remotely not alright was irrational. One man shouldn’t feel that deep, aching pain for another man, even those as close as he’d read Bucky Barnes was with Steve Rogers, at least to his memory. It didn’t matter what his mind said, though, because without fail, the panic would well up and—

“His vitals appear stable, Sergeant Barnes, and he has a more favorable caloric balance today than yesterday.” God bless JARVIS. “If I might say so, Sergeant Barnes, you have done a fantastic job maintaining Captain Rogers’s health today.” It was meant to be comforting, Bucky was sure, but given that he’d only been there for a day and only had managed to get Steve to eat because he had, it didn’t mean much. 

“Turn me around if I get lost, JARVIS,” Bucky said, careful to keep his voice in that polite suggestion tone that JARVIS himself seemed to use. At first, the system had insisted upon pointing out the way in advance, and while it was helpful, it meant that Bucky wasn’t free to learn his own way. He’d convinced the system to let him wander lost for a few minutes before redirecting him.

As it turned out, Bucky only had to be guided in the correct direction once on his way to the communal kitchen. It was the first place Tony had taken him, afterall. His arm wasn’t back to baseline, but it had stopped shooting sparks without reason and the plates no longer caught when he tried to bend at the elbow. The resident genius had insisted that Bucky find him in the morning, that he’d have something else worked out by then to make improvements. It made him wonder what Tony was doing with his nights.

“Bucky?” Steve asked, and Bucky nearly jumped from his skin. He’d found the communal floor easily, and he’d managed to navigate to the coffee—hot tea wasn’t much for someone like him, thanks anyway JARVIS—but had gotten lost in his thoughts. It was a habit he was forming since coming out of the Winter Soldier programming. Steve seemed to be pleased enough with his progress, so Bucky didn’t worry over it. “You alright?” 

“Yeah,” he said, turning toward the couch and television, where some old western was playing with the volume so low that Bucky couldn’t make out the dialogue. There was a new face beside Steve on the couch, turned to look at him over the back of the sofa curiously. He was sharp-eyed, and the programming briefly flared a warning that the man was dangerous. He didn’t look dangerous as Bucky took a seat in an oversized recliner. He looked tired, with bags under his eyes and a Robin Hood t-shirt and sweats suggesting he’d tried to sleep. “Just finding my way around.” 

“You’ll get used to it.” Steve was reassuring, but it was the snicker from the other man that put Bucky at ease. 

“Stark is all about efficiency, so if you can think of the most efficient way from point A to point B, you’ll do fine. There’re elevators due North and South with another in the middle of the tower. You ever get too lost and JARVIS will get you where you need to be.” 

“Appreciate it,” Bucky said with a nod. He’d seen the other man before, he realized. It was in the footage he’d watched about Captain America and the Chitauri invasion. HYDRA had a code name for him, but Bucky couldn’t remember his real—

“Clint Barton,” he said, tapping himself once in the chest. “You prefer James or...”

“Bucky,” he said, voice sharper than it had to be. James had been what they’d called him before he was simply The Asset. “I don’t think I’m James Barnes anymore.” 

“You’re whoever you want to be,” Steve said, voice that odd mix of disappointment and reassurance than Steve’d had mastered since childhood. 

“I want’a be on speakin’ terms with the sandman,” Bucky offered by way of peace treaty. Steve liked the comfortable Brooklyn drawl, but he was too mild mannered to admit it. 

“No one’s sleeping tonight.” The new voice sent him from his seat, dropping the coffee mug and putting his back to the wall. Instinct had his arm in front of him, waiting. Eyes sought out escape routes, weapons, targets and finally—

“Oh,” he murmured, dropping his arm and leaning against the wall, sinking down to his buttocks. The woman wasn’t dangerous, not outwardly. She was slight and wearing odd pale purple pajama bottoms and a white tank top. Beneath that, she was the definition of sharp, her tea mug gripped tight and arm tense as if waiting to use it as a projectile. The spoon she’d been using was held delicately but deftly, as one might hold a dagger. 

“Natasha!” Steve said harshly, and in a a moment, Steve was in front of him, spitting words of condemnation at the woman. “Do we sneak up on your at night?” 

“I’m sorry,” she said, relaxing her hand on the spoon. 

“Don’t be, doll,” Bucky said, trying to ignore the burning of self-depreciation that was bubbling in his gut. “You’re not the one that jumped like they stepped on a land mine. M’fine, Stevie.” The nickname came unbidden, another thing he knew but couldn’t remember. The slow smile that spread across Steve’s face was worth any slip up or embarrassment. The woman must have seen it too, though, because a shadow of the same flickered across her face before she schooled her features into a frown. 

“Don’t call me doll.” 

“Fair enough.” he held a hand out to Steve, who heaved him to his feet far too easily. It felt natural, moving around and with Steve, like they’d done everything there was to do so many times that it was all like breathing. “This everyone in the Tower?” 

“Bruce will be around somewhere, hopefully asleep. Tony’ll be down in his workshop,” Steve said. Bucky nodded and sank back down into his armchair. “This is Natasha. Nat this is Bucky.” 

“Nice to meet you when you aren’t shooting at me,” she offered, and that shadowed smile was back. He’d almost worked up an apology when Clint scoffed and the pair were laughing like something was funny. 

“First time I met Nat, I shot her,” Clint explained after he calmed. “Didn’t take the kill shot, but I think Natasha meets everyone on one end of a weapon or another.” Natasha settled down beside him on the arm of the couch, legs over his lap but not touching him. They were comfortable with each other, he realized, like two people who knew everything there was to know about the other and trusted them implicitly. 

“Is no one on a normal schedule?” This time Bucky didn’t jump when the new voice came. He’d heard the light shuffling of feet in the hallway and the teapot being settled down on a counter. 

“I apologize for the interruption, Dr. Banner.” JARVIS’s voice was different than normal. Whereas earlier in the night it had been relaxed, at ease and completely pleasant, now it was pressured and if a British accent could sound anxious, JARVIS was trying. “Sir appears to need assistance within the lab.”

“Needs assistance as in he wants our opinions on weapons upgrades or needs assistance as in he accidentally slipped with a hacksaw and is bleeding from the femoral?” Clint asked, still lazing on the couch. No one had jumped to attention, but the tone in the AI’s voice made him uncomfortable. 

“I’ll check on him if JARVIS will direct me,” Bucky said. Steve arched an eyebrow at him, but Bucky couldn’t get the picture of a haggard man attempting to put on a front from his mind. 

“Let us know if you need help,” Steve said. The newcomer to the floor nodded and peered anxiously at the door. 

“Sir believes that Sergeant Branes will serve his purpose, and he adds, Sergeant, that he has some news concerning the modifications to your arm.” If Bucky walked a little faster at that, he wouldn’t admit to it. 

As it turned out, he should have picked up the pace a little bit more because when he entered the lab—an impressive enough site on its own—he was met with a site that made his arm look like child’s play. The chest cavity had been cut away. Part of the ribs and lung tissue had to have been removed to make room for the canister like metal hole in the man’s chest. There was scarring, raised and white and twisting around the implement that held figments of a darker pigment, something that looked like it might have been worse, once upon a time. 

“Ah, Barnes, sorry to not let you wade into this, but since you’re the only one that bothered with the distress call, you’re going to have to deal.” Stark was pale, now that Bucky was looking at him and not just the hole in his chest. Sweat pearled up on his forehead and dripped down his temples and off the end of his nose when he dipped his head forward. “Mind holding onto this for me?”

He held a small cylinder between his thumb and forefinger, as if it was delicate. Bucky took it with his flesh hand, watching as the engineer pried a wire off of the back and re-attached a new wire in its place. Quickly, he pivoted the rear of the piece until it came away completely from the rest of the piece that Bucky held. With his other hand, Tony picked a small bit of metal out of the detached fragment. Within a minute, he had the entire thing put back together and back in his chest, a light blue glow lightening the dim lab. 

“What the fuck was that?” Now that the piece was back in place, Stark looked better, healier and his breathing was returning to normal. 

“Just needed a piece of this.” Stark held up a small chunk of metal pinched delicately between a pair of forceps. “You swear but the Star Spangled Man doesn’t?”

“Steve swears.” Bucky said it before he even knew it was true. As if bidden by the words, he knew that he’d heard Steve before, when thing had gotten bad. What things, he wasn’t sure about, but it was true, just like so many other things were true. 

“Sure he does.” 

“What was that?” Bucky asked again, realizing he’d been distracted. He was starting to feel that Stark was good at that, distraction and deflection. 

“Nothing, just a little battery,” Stark said quickly, flippantly, as if the worlds didn’t mean anything. “Sort of a light-up bit of jewelry. Funny enough, it had an appropriate metal substitute for the level of energy needed in that arm of yours.”

“I thought you said that—”

“I said there wasn’t any of the metal available just then. I reappropriated some.” He held up the forceps with the small piece of metal pinched carefully between them. 

“You took something out of your chest to put in my arm.” It wasn’t really a question, mostly because the idea turned his stomach. 

“It was either take some out of this thing or recreate a fusion chamber in the lab. Last time I sent half of Manhattan into darkness. They said if I did it again, it better be for something extra important.” There was an air of condescension to his tone that Bucky didn’t like but knew wasn’t directed at him.

“If it’s that hard to make, why do you wear it as...jewelry?” It was a lie, he knew. He didn’t need the Soldier to tell him that the implement in Stark’s chest wasn’t a piece of jewelry, but if the billionaire wanted to keep his secrets, Bucky wasn’t going to push. 

“I’m a flashy sort of guy,” Stark said, waving the question off. “I like expensive things.” He had pulled a dark tank-top down over his head, followed by a band t-shirt that was so covered in grease that it looked damp. 

“Awful big hole for your appearance,” Bucky said, shaking his head slightly. It was wrong, but he didn’t know how or why, so he let it go. “You said something about my arm.” Stark was already leaning down over his workbench, that little piece of metal melting away in a small kiln, dark brown eyes watching it closely. 

“Uh...what? Yeah,” Stark said, half distracted. “Sit down, here.” Bucky hesitated a moment, sitting himself across from Stark, who had taken the molten metal out and pouted it into a small mold. 

“You sure you’re awake enough for this?” Bucky asked, eyeing his unsteady hands. Earlier in the day, the man had been rock solid, not so much as a tremor wracking any part of him. Now, he was sluggish, almost sloppy. 

“Of course. Don’t insult me.” It took him three tries to get the screwdriver beneath the plating. Bucky met his eyes as the man looked up at him, probably to see if he’d noticed. “Shut up.” 

“Why don’t we just wait until—”

“Aha!” Tony shouted, popping the plating finally. He dug far deeper into the arm than he had earlier, the tips of tiny forceps delving past bits and pieces that Bucky didn’t know the names to. In the end, Stark wiggled something aside and exposed a small piece of metal, charred black and miserable looking. The new piece fit perfectly, and as soon as the plate was put back into place, Bucky could feel the difference. 

The arm shifted with his thoughts, perfect and without catches. The strength there felt incredible, as if he could crush the world in that palm. It was stronger than it had been before, the fingers moving more quickly, more deftly. 

“Better, right?” Stark asked, voice rising in volume like an eager child waiting for its parent to approve of something it had done. “What they used was putting half of the energy put into it off as heat. That’ll run at body temperature and no higher. The metal in that won’t need replaced in your lifetime. Well, in my lifetime. Still not sure—”

“Thank you, Stark,” he said, feeling the metal shift and react nearly before he’d thought of moving it. 

“Don’t break it,” Tony said, dismissing the thanks with a quick wave. There was a nervous energy to him, and it made Bucky uncomfortable. “Go back to bridge night or whatever.”

“Get some sleep, Stark,” Bucky said as he walked out the door, pleased with the easy way the arm reacted to grip the door handle.

Back on the communal floor—because Bucky had left his coffee spilled across the floor, and it wasn’t fair to expect someone else to pick it up—the rest were still awake and talking quietly. The sudden silence when he entered the room was obvious, and no one tried to cover it up. 

“Just wondering if you’d killed Stark,” Natasha said, but there was a lightness to her tone that meant something more than ‘We were wondering if the Winter Soldier killed our host’. 

“Wouldn’t necessarily blame you if you got called down for something dumb.” Clint was leaning back into the chair, head lolled back over the fluffy cushion to look at him. “Man called me down to the lab once to ask me to show him how I gripped my bow.”

“He was working on something for me,” Bucky said with a shrug. “Can’t be mad about that, and he needed the help.” 

“I can at four in the morning,” Clint said, a smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “I’m going to pass out. Lunch tomorrow, do not forget.” His eyes sough out Natasha. 

“Since when do we have team meals?” Steve asked, his forehead wrinkling. Bucky stared at him a good long moment, taking in the easy way he could nearly draw a medical muscle diagram from looking at him. Stark was right; they all needed to eat more. Clint was more bulk and less height than Steve, but it was easy to see the gauntness to his cheeks and the slightly too severe taper of a waist. Natasha was slight, and the memory of a black catsuit told him that she shouldn’t have been as small as she was.

“You complainin’ about homemade food?” Bucky asked. Even to his memory, scrawny Steve Rogers loved to eat. No one had enough to eat in the 40’s. 

“Nah,” Steve shook his head, a smile in place. “If Stark arranged this, it’ll be a caterer.”

“You’re complainin’ about good food?” Bucky could just hear Clint’s guffaw from the hall at that. 

“No, Buck. I’m not.” Steve was still smiling, so Bucky figured he’d done something right. 

“Good, because I’m goin’ to bed.” He left Natasha, Steve and Bruce there, sitting around in the common room. Bruce, Bucky realized, hadn’t said a word the entire time.

“If I may, Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS said as soon as Bucky’s door was shut behind him. “You have done extraordinarily well.” 

“Get some sleep, JARVIS.”

“I do not sleep, Sergeant Barnes.” Bucky sighed. “Goodnight, Sergeant Barnes.” Bucky rolled over, buried his head into a pillow, and let sleep claim him.

_The Soldier was trailing a little girl through the Alps, letting her lead him like a dog. Something in his eyes was malfunctioning, as the little girl didn’t quite seem right. Her edges were blurred, stretched in places and scrunched down in others. She had a shock of bright blonde hair that he couldn’t quite see but knew existed, as well as big, green eyes that stared right into the center of him. She couldn’t have been more than five, but then, the Soldier remembered her, knew her, for longer than five years._

_It was difficult to think on, and every time he did, she would turn to him, smile sweetly and call his name, begging him forward. Something primal and protective would rise in his stomach and follow. She needed him, after-all. He wasn’t sure why or how, but she needed him, and he would follow her. He would follow her because she was his to protect, something that belonged solely to the Soldier._

_He followed her for a week, straight through forests covered in snow and the wide, open doors of a HYDRA base until he was sitting down in the Chair. After, the little girl was always gone, replaced by a woman in her late twenties with tears running down her face. The Soldier hated that woman because she was only there when the little girl wasn’t._

_“Soldier?” The little girl’s voice called to him, sweet and high and clear. “Soldier, why aren’t you helping me?”_

“Bucky, you alright?” Bucky woke up standing in the middle of a hallway at Stark tower, hand on the door to the stairs. He turned, blinking at Bruce Banner, who was standing half-in and half-out of a door. He’d changed his clothes and the deep fatigue to his face had gone. “Lunch is in ten. I came down to see if you were on your way. This is the stairwell to the communal floors. That that’ll take you down to the main level or the roof.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky said, shaking off his disorientation. He hadn’t ever walked in his sleep before, but he supposed there was a first for everything. The blonde headed blur from his dream flashed behind his eyes followed by the dark haired woman. The girl was unfamiliar, but the woman...he knew that woman from somewhere other than his nightmare. “Yeah, let’s eat.”


	4. The Difference Between Knowing and Remembering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for your kind words and kudos! I appreciate every one of them!

Chapter Four: The Difference Between Knowing and Remembering

“Bucky, come on,” Steve said from behind a punching bag. The bigger man had been down in the gym for the better part of three hours, destroying two of Stark’s industrial bags, going on a third. 

“You come on. I want to see Coney Island,” Bucky said, which was a lie. He had—in vernacular that Clint had taught him one night over hot chocolate spiked with something spicy—zero fucks to give about Coney Island. Steve hadn’t left the Tower except for a run in the week that Bucky had been back, and he was starting to turn that sickly pale that meant he needed more sunlight. 

Taking care of the super soldier had been mostly easy. Getting him to routinely eat and shower was as difficult as Bucky saying he was hungry or wrinkling his nose and saying he smelled like Duggan. Bucky didn’t remember the big man in the Howling Commandos exhibit, so he had no idea if he was accurate or not, but it always made Steve smile and head for a shower. He always managed a jibe about how Bucky didn’t smell like roses either. More often than not, the pair were in one of Stark’s jumbo sized showers, backs to the other, washing with purpose and a few easy jokes. 

It was far from a hardship, with the way the showers had four heads above and at least four that jetting out from all of the walls save the door. Bucky could sit in that misty rain for hours if it didn’t mean the skin around the arm started to pucker and ache. Having one less arm meant he had less skin to wash though, and in the time it took Steve to wash his own arm, Bucky would glance over, gauging how much weight the man still had to put on. At least, that’s what Bucky told himself the glances were for. 

No, getting Steve fed and showered was easy. Getting him out of the Tower, on the other hand, was proving more difficult. Bucky thought that maybe Steve was happier when Bucky pretended that the Soldier wasn’t still in the back of his mind, calling out lines of sight and potential threats. So, he pretended. He lied. He tensed up to keep from moving too quickly or reacting too extremely. It wasn’t too much of a price to pay, not for what he was getting in return. 

A roof over his head. As much to eat as he wanted. Someone to look at the arm, make it better, make it a part of _him_ instead of a part of the Soldier. That morning, Stark had removed the red star, filling it in seamlessly with a new plate and making sure that no shadow of the memory that might have been HYDRA remained. It helped. It also helped that Bucky had a purpose in the Tower. He felt like a mother hen on occasion, pecking through with a firm glare and a nudge, but he supposed it was worth it as well. 

“Buck, I don’t want to—”

“Tough shit,” he said, hands in his pockets, leading him along like the crowd wasn’t bothering him. Steve had protested from the gym to the park, and at every complaint, Bucky had shot him down like the sniper he was. 

That morning, Bucky had found a dark blue jacket hooked over his door knob, and it covered his arm perfectly while simultaneously reminding him of the one on display at the MET. He kept his metal hand buried in the pocket of the jeans that had materialized in his dresser. If anyone asked, he’d tell them that the arm was a prosthetic from the war. It wasn’t a lie. 

Steve had quietly fallen in beside him, and when Bucky looked over, his miserable look had been replaced with a smile. 

“What’re you smiling about?” he asked.

“Just this,” he answered. “It’s good to have you back, Bucky. Back like it was before we were freezing in trenches and I had to pretend to know what I was doing.” 

“I can’t remember it,” Bucky admitted with a shrug. “Some things feel right. Some things I know, like I know you hated this place.” Steve’s megawatt smile did not disappear at the admission. 

It didn’t disappear until six hours later, when they were both sitting in a car at the top of a ferris wheel, talking and bullshitting more than not. Steve was telling him a story about one of the Howling Commando raides, and Bucky was listening with rapt attention, trying to remember that version of who he was. A sharp, echoing crack startled them from their story, and the next thing either of them knew, they were pitching sideways, Steve end over end into Bucky, who had his metal arm wrapped around a sidebar on their seat and another around Steve’s bicep. 

The whole thing groaned again and another great crack sounded. Screams echoed in Bucky’s ears. People were shouting. The Soldier roared, demanding to be let out. Do. Act. Be. 

“Let me go, Bucky!” Steve shouted, and while Bucky’s mind begged differently, the Soldier complied. Steve dropped, catching himself on another support beam, this one bent horribly sideways. Across the park, more screams sounded, and the world around them exploded into chaos. The ferris wheel was falling, slowly and with great lurches stopped suddenly by metal trying to do its job. 

Metal. 

Bucky glared down at the metal arm that was still gripping the sidebar, even as Steve was taking a little girl out of a car and down the side of the ride to safety. The drop down to the ground did little more than make his hips and ankles pop in annoyance, his body accustomed to the treatment from years of missions. 

Bucky Barnes couldn’t do this, he realized as he stared at the metal death-trap as it pitched sideways further. The Soldier could. 

His vision blackened. 

He only came back to himself when Steve was shaking his shoulder, begging him to move, to wake up, to come back. Come back he did, this time to a world where the Winter Soldier had braced himself against the base of the machine, using his metal arm to support the mass until Steve had gotten everyone from the ride. 

“Buck, come on, we gotta go. Please, come on.” Steve was begging, pulling uselessly at the metal arm, which had nearly embedded itself into the metal base. Bucky released his fist, and the whole thing groaned, falling quickly, nearly too quickly for them to escape from beneath it. 

“What happened?” he asked, eyes flickering back and forth. It was different now. The Soldier was awake, in his skin, but listening. 

“Something blew up. There’s drones. Stark is on his way. The rest of the team isn’t far behind, but we don’t know—”

He was cut off by a low swooping object, nearly sentient as it came back around and toward them. It had a single minded focus, directly right at Steve, who dodged left and right, rolling and turning, trying to get out of the way. It was a missile, the Soldier supplied, somehow targeting Captain America instead of anyone else. It was the Soldier that reached out, tripped up Captain America at an inopportune moment, and quick as lightning, drove the cybernetic arm through the missile. 

It sparked and crackled, and it was only Steve’s screamed order to throw it that had Bucky following the command. It exploded not ten feet above their heads, sending the pair to the ground. 

Sharp, sniper’s eyes flickered over the scene, trying to place the source of the missile, the thought behind the weapon. Well-remembered fatigues and black kevlar whispered through the crowd, coming toward the pair. Assault rifles were clutched tight, but if they planned on shooting, they were already close enough. 

“HYDRA,” he said, drawing Steve’s attention. The man was pitched forward on his knees and one hand. The other was braced against his middle, where blood was dripping across his hand and forearm. “Steve?” 

“Got it,” he said through gritted teeth. “Shouldn’t be long. Tony was nearly—”

“Here.” The Iron Man suit hurtled through the air, landing so hard that its repulsors burned the ground and dust rose around him. For the fraction of a moment, Bucky rolled his eyes at the showmanship of the entrance, the front and center posturing. It was the Soldier that recognized it at first. 

The Iron Man suit stood between Steve and Bucky and the HYDRA agents that were melting toward them through the crowd, guns ready. Little explosions and sharp pinging noises stopped just in front of them. Bullets, the Soldier supplied. The Iron Man suit was deflecting or stopping them, keeping the Super Soldiers from further harm. Not even Steve could get back up from a hail of gunfire, and Bucky’s serum wasn’t quiet up to that either. “I let you out of the Tower for a day, and I find you playing with ruffians.” 

 

The robotic voice of Iron Man didn’t convey the amusement that Bucky imagined was in Stark’s voice. He pulled himself to his feet, taking care to stay behind the suit. “Got a gun?” he asked hopefully. A thigh holster popped open on the suit, and from it Bucky pulled two small handguns. 

“They’re for Widow, but you’ll do.” His shoulder rockets opened, the technology taking careful aim before a hail of the tiny missiles launched a counter-attack. “Cover us.” And just like that, Bucky was firing over the shoulder of Iron Man as the suit bent down, easily lifting Steve from the ground.

The Super Soldier gave only token protests as he was rocketed upward to meet the Quin Jet hovering a a few yards over their heads. The Soldier was rejoicing in those moments between having the Suit in front of him and when he returned. Bodies hit the grass. Bullets whirled by him, a few stopped by the metal arm. Once embedded in his thigh, but it was more of a distant sting than true pain. Adrenalin, he knew, was a wonderful thing. 

It wasn’t until Hawkeye and Black Widow were on the ground that the waves of agents disappeared amongst smoke and chaos. Bucky gripped the handgun tighter in his human hand, forcing the Soldier to calm, to not give chase. there was an edge to him, one that he couldn’t seem to shake, one that only grew as the agents disappeared. 

“Something’s not right,” Widow said, eyes flickering like his own. Hawkeye spun in a slow circle, trying to place what was making his spine tingle. 

“On your six, Barnes,” Iron Man said, voice shouted as the suit rocketed toward him. Bucky had no comm. He and Steve hadn’t been planning on the world trying to end when they’d left, and he had little more than his arm and the pair of guns Stark had given him. 

He spun, turning directly into the snake-quick strike of an open palm against his throat. He choked on his own tongue for a moment, bringing his arm up in front of his face as a rush of familiarity spiked in his stomach. 

“You left me!” a woman shouted. The ground beneath his feet was gone in an instant, swept away from beneath him by a boot. Hawkeye and Widow were only a few paces behind him, and he could hear the threat from Widow’s lips toward the woman. 

“Easy, Menstrual Rage Barbie,” Stark said, hovering between the woman and Bucky, on his ass in the dirt. Bucky felt something familiar rise in his throat, like bile only more bitter. One of the suit’s repulsors came up, took aim, and just as it was about to fire, Bucky was on his feet and pushing the arm into the air, the blast flying harmlessly into the sky. 

“Stop it!” he shouted, eyes locking on the woman. She was tall for her sex, nearly six feet, and lean, one might say lanky. Black kevlar coated her from foot to collar, and as Bucky stared at her, he was shocked with familiarity. Dark brown hair was pulled back from her face, a face that he couldn’t help but know. Pale. Littered in little cuts and bruises. An image of her speaking to him while hanging by her wrists in a cell rocked him. 

“Activate the programming!” The words were faint on the air, but Bucky could pick them up, and from the way the suit’s head cocked to the side, so had Iron Man. They were faded, crackling, like a comm. That was all it took to see the black device in the woman’s ear. A smile quirked the left corner of her mouth, the corner that was marred with a small scar. 

“You left me,” she repeated, staring at him as though two trained assassins didn’t have their weapons on her, as though there was no war-suit between them. “James Buchannon Barnes, you son of a bitch! You call yourself a good man?” She was moving, ducking under the outstretched arm of the suit and throwing fists and feet at him. “Your friend, Steve Rogers came for you and you couldn’t return the favor?” The words were scripted, familiar in his ears, but just this side of wrong, like they’d been twisted. The blows were not overly sharp, not in the way they could have been. 

In the next moment, Widow was slipping around them, throwing the woman bodily a few feet away, so she landed on her back in the dirt. Even as the enemy was there, in front of him, the Soldier refused to rise as it had earlier, even as Bucky was wiping blood away from a split lip. “You’re nothing like me!” The woman shouted at him, rocking to her feet and falling sideways slightly, in a well practiced stance. Physically, she should have been preparing for another fight, for the arrow aimed at her head, for the energy sparking along Widow’s Bites. 

Instead, she was staring at him intently, blue eyes intensely focused on his face, as if she was waiting for something, waiting for—

_Oh._

The corner of her mouth quirked up, and with a little nod, she pivoted on her heel, running through the screaming chaos of people around them. Widow went after her, but Bucky knew it wouldn’t matter. 

“Well, that was interesting,” Iron Man said. He turned to Bucky, who for the life of him, could not speak. “Barnes?” 

He knew he was supposed to speak, to respond, but everything was too fresh, too close to the front of his mind. 

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice startled him. Steve, who stood there, a hand pressed against a bandage against his stomach, looking for all the world like the concerned little slip of a kid that had taken care of Bucky back then. Sometimes, Steve picked fights not even Bucky could finish, and it was always that same look. He was still that little punk.

“Stevie?” he asked, voice cracking on the name. That strong jaw had always been there, had come from Steve’s old man, passed down to his son. It looked more impressive on post-serum Steve. “Jesus, punk, you look like shit.” 

It was the nickname, really, that must have clued Steve in, as Bucky couldn’t remember calling him that since he’d come back. It was that he could remember calling him that at all that was important. 

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, standing in front of Bucky uneasily. 

“I remember,” he said. Steve looked at him for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Jesus, punk, you gotta take better care of yourself.” Just like that, Steve’s face was like a sunrise and the pair were crushed together in a hug that should have done damage but didn’t. 

Because Bucky remembered. Bucky remembered thinking Steve was dead from the newspaper headlines HYDRA allowed him to read. Bucky remembered seeing the tortured look on Steve’s face when the metal of the train gave way. Neither of them were dead, and that was a really fucking _heavy_ thing. Bucky closed his eyes against the sheer weight of everything around him and pressed his clenched fists tighter into Steve’s back. 

\--A Whole Person--

Bucky sat on the roof of Stark Tower, a plate of steak, sweet corn and roasted potatoes in front of him as he tipped the lawn chair backward to the point of balancing. His hands laid on top of his overfull stomach as he stared at the sun setting beyond the city. 

The roof had been turned into an outdoor patio of sorts by order of Clint and Tony, who had insisted that if there had ever been a reason to celebrate, this was it. A large—obscenely large—grill took up an entire corner complete with a smoker and more raw meat on ice than Bucky had ever seen in one place. 

The patio chairs and table were set up not far away, just far enough to avoid the smoke, and Tony himself was playing grill master, which was why, Bucky was sure, none of their plates were empty despite their distended stomachs. Tony had no eye for proportions. 

Clint and Natasha were locked in a heated game that Clint had affectionately called “Bags” as he hauled two pieces of plywood up the stairs. Even Bruce was sitting up in the sunlight, kicked back on a lawn chair and watching with obvious amusement as the spies tried their best to distract each other from their appointed task—getting a beanbag into the hole in the plywood. 

It had been declared The Homecoming of James Buchannon Barnes—Part Two. His real homecoming, he supposed. The one where he knew his friend as more than the picture in a museum or the stories from someone else’s lips. 

He tilted his head back, enjoying the breeze off of the ocean and the warmth of the sun. Behind his eyes, he couldn’t get the image of the woman out of his mind. He remembered her, just like he remembered Steve now. By the time they’d thrown him in the cells, she had forgotten her own name but had immediately asked for his, as if it was painfully important. He’d given it to her, and more rapid fire questions had followed until finally, she calmed down, sagged against the cement wall, and thought. 

_“Your name is James Buchannon Barnes,” she said._

_“Yeah, doll, just told you—”_

_“Quiet,” she hissed. “Quiet and listen. This is important. Do you understand?” He hadn’t, but he’d seen enough dames stricken with some panic or another to nod._

_“Your name is James Buchannon Barnes. You are a good man. Your best friend is Steve Rogers, and he is coming for you. I will never let you end up like me.” She repeated it to him once an hour that first day, twice an hour the second, thrice an hour the third and so on until she was nearly telling him every five minutes._

_They took him from the cell after that, put the last to him, burned him, cut him. When they threw him back in the bottom of their cell, she had hung against the wall as he righted himself, leaning pathetically in a pile by her feet._

_“Your name is James Buchannon Barnes. You are a good man. Your best friend is Steve Rogers, and he is coming for you. I will never let you end up like me.” In that moment, as he lay there, trying to forget the pain, he realized that she wasn’t as crazy as he’d thought. No, in the next year, as they tried to beat everything but their slave out of him, she was startlingly clear minded._

_“What’s your name?” he asked six months into their captivity. They’d taken her that morning and deposited her back bloody and bruised. It hadn’t occurred to him how important it was._

_“I don’t remember,” she said._

_“Where are you from?” he asked, trying for anything that would tie her to who she had been before._

_“I don’t remember,” she said._

_“Who is important to you?” he tried._

_“Your name is James Buchannon Barnes,” she said instead of answering. She propped herself against the wall across from him, drawing one long leg to her chest. There was blood running from her hairline down across one side of her face, drying at the corner of her mouth. It cracked as she spoke. “You are a—”_

_“I know!” he shouted, cutting her off. He was angry, almost irrationally so, in that moment. “I know what I am. I’m trying to help you.” The look on her face at that was enough to break his heart._

_“I don’t remember,” she said at length, the words holding more meaning than they had before. “I don’t...” She bit fiercely into her bottom lip, drawing fresh blood._

_“Hey, easy,” he said, reaching as far against the chains as he could toward her. They never left them both unchained, and as Bucky watched her fall apart on the floor of the cell, he was glad that at least it was him whose arms ached and shoulders threatened to dislocate._

_It was several hours before she spoke again._

_“I have been here for as long as I can remember, but it was not all my life,” she said into the darkness of their cell. Night had fallen outside, and with it, their only light. “The name they give me is not who I am. I will not obey. I will never let anyone else end up like me.” It was a simple enough string of statements, and at first, he didn’t realize that it was her mantra._

_Like his, it was all she had left._

“Bucky?” Steve stood staring down at him, a smile on his lips. Bucky shook himself, nearly sending the lawn chair toppling. Steve caught it with one hand, steadied it and finally set it back on all four legs. “You alright?” 

“Yeah,” Bucky said, staring out at the darkening city. “Hey, Stevie?” The man looked down at him before settling on the chair across from him. 

“Yeah, Buck?” 

“Thanks for coming for me.” Captain America wouldn’t know, surely enough Steve was confused beside him. He wouldn’t know that he was half of what had kept him sane for years before the Chair. Was half of what had kept him coming back time and time again after. 

“Of course,” Steve said after a long silence. The genuine ring to the words was familiar and comforting. Bucky stood up and crossed to the end of the building, leaning on the railing and staring out into the last few ribbons of sunlight. 

“My name is James Buchannon Barnes. I am a good man. My best friend is Steve Rogers...”

He finished the words in his head, changing them around a bit to fix his new reality, his new world. They weren’t for him anymore, not really. They were for a woman that was too young still, that was startlingly familiar, that had given him hope when he’d had nothing. 

Bucky turned and leaned his back against the railing, watching everyone around him. Clint was gesturing wildly with his hands, spinning in a celebratory circle after a lucky toss. Natasha was looking on with an odd mix of amusement and derision. Tony had another plate of meat and grilled vegetables and was looking at them all like they were expected to eat every bite. Bruce was watching with a quiet amusement while Steve took a burger from Tony’s tray despite the way he sighed down at the food a moment later. 

That woman had given everything back to him when he had nothing, and now...he had a lot. He had Steve, even if the punk wasn’t taking care of himself. He had Clint who looked at him like he understood, who taught him things that were important but not at the top of a SHIELD dossier. He had Banner, who was more calming than anyone else Bucky had ever known and who didn’t mind when Bucky’s mind wandered down dark paths. He had Stark, who liked to pretend he didn’t give two-shits but really worried and did more for everyone than he’d ever let on. 

He supposed, as he pushed off of the wall and walked back toward them, he even had Natasha, who would kill him if he ever needed killing. Gently, of course, and with great prejudice. That was as much of a favor as all the rest.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I wrote this, I didn't know what I felt about it, and after a re-write and sitting and staring at it for about a day, I still don't know how I feel about it.

Chapter Five: Sweetling

A young woman stood on tip toe, arms bound above her head, nearly suspending her in the air. She’d been stripped down to HYDRA issued black underwear and a black sports bra. It was easier for the lashing. they never punished her for very long anymore, though. The steady drip of her blood against the tile floor was more relaxing than the pain of the lash. 

“You failed to bring your comrade home,” a voice said in the darkness. “Your Soldier is far from his home, from those that care for him, and you left him there.” She bit her tongue to keep words buried in her throat. As long as she remained quiet, they wouldn’t know. 

The lash fell across her low back, splitting skin and bringing on another wave of pain. Pain, she welcomed. Pain cleared her mind, kept her focused, kept her herself. She needed to focus so she didn’t make a mistake. 

“Do you have anything to sat in your defense?” She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to bite her tongue clean through more than she wanted to speak. 

“Soldier?” she called, trying to force her voice into that sweet, innocent tone it took on when she was something other than what she wanted to be. “Where is my Soldier?” 

The lash fell again, this time running nearly the length of her spine and curling around her right shoulder. They would stop soon. They never went too far when they thought she was what they made her. She wasn’t the Soldier, afterall. The version of the serum that they forced through her veins was strong enough to keep her alive through their beatings, but the little girl they’d made her with the Chair wasn’t strong enough mentally to handle them.

The serum kept her young. It didn’t make her as strong as it had made James, but it made her strong enough to pretend. It had kept her young for so long already, far too young for far too long, but it had done other things too. Unplanned things. Things had had made their perfectly advanced weapon into nothing more than another body to be wiped clean and rebuilt. 

“Don’t you want your Soldier to come home, Sweetling?” The name they called her turned her stomach. It was the name of the little girl, the innocent that they’d given the Soldier decades before. The Soldier’s conditioning wouldn’t allow him to ignore her when she called for him, and they’d used the little girl time and time again over the years when he’d become more Bucky and less Asset. 

She couldn’t remember much from her time before, just that she’d been more than she was now and that somewhere along the line, their testing had extinguished what made her unique. She did know that she was not their little girl, not the delicate creature the Soldier saw her as when the right words were whispered in his ear. 

The Soldier had helped her before he was programmed to do so, back when he was James Buchannon Barnes. A James Barnes that she hoped with his friend and far more free for her disobedience than he’d been before. 

“You know the words that will bring him to home, and yet you lashed out at him. I understand you would be upset that he was taken from us, that he abandoned you here, but we have to bring him home.” The chill of drying blood made her shiver, and in the next few moments, the lash fell again. “Do you understand, Sweetling?” The man was behind her, whispering over her shoulder and petting her head like a child. 

“Yes,” she said, forcing the word out. 

Hours later, as she sat against the cinder block wall of her latest cell, she whispered. 

“I have been here for as long as I can remember, but it was not all of my life. The name they give me is not who I am. I will not obey. I will never let anyone else end up like me.”

\--A Whole Person--

“I don’t remember a whole lot from between when I fell and when they threw me in the cell for the first time,” Bucky said. 

He and Steve were sitting on opposite sides of the kitchen counter on the communal floor. Steve was the only one acting the part of audience, but the rest were scattered around the room. Bucky supposed it was to make him feel less on edge, and while he appreciated the sentiment, it didn’t help. 

Natasha was playing at filing and painting her fingernails, using Clint as a table as he sat on the couch, flipping an arrowhead in his hand. Tony was working on something on a StarkPad while Bruce pretended to read a report that was over Bucky’s head. 

“What I do remember is seeing that woman chained to the wall. She asked me for my name, who I was, where I was from, a lot of silly things that weren’t important.” He chuckled under his breath. “It was important; I didn’t know it at the time.”

“Subliminal conditioning,” Natasha said. She didn’t look up from the delicate work of her manicure. 

“She picked out what was important, put it all together, and she repeated it to me so often that I couldn’t forget it. Those words brought me back from everything but the Chair.” He stopped at that, trying to fight the little rise of _fear, anger, pain_ that seemed to bloom in his mind every time he thought about the Chair. 

“Buck, you don’t have to do this,” Steve said. Steve had said the same thing the night before, when they were all on the roof and again that morning. Bucky had used the out given to him each time until finally, it seemed like too much of a betrayal to not speak. 

“Yeah, I do,” he said, steeling his resolve, steeling his spine. “They kept us together for a long time, even after the chair. As the Soldier, I knew her as Sweetling. As James Barnes, she didn’t have a name. She didn’t remember her own, but she hated the name they gave her. It wasn’t until I started having a harder time coming back to myself that they took her away and left me in the cell alone. When I was the Soldier, they occasionally sent us out on joint operations, but she was more useful in bringing me back than fighting.” 

“Bringing you back?” Bruce had abandoned all pretense of reading and was staring at him over the top of the closed file. 

“Sometimes, the Soldier didn’t see her. He saw a little girl, and he...I had to protect her. It was important.” Bucky could feel the lump rising in his throat, the urge even now to put that blonde haired little girl at his back and keep the world away from her with his knives and his arm and his—

“She’s like us, then?” Steve asked, startling Bucky from the wave of nearly crippling duty. He shook his head a moment, trying to dispel what had risen there. 

“Sort of,” Bucky said. “You and me, Stevie, we were pretty normal before the serum, but she was...different? Before it, she was different. They wanted her for a weapon, but the serum erased what they were hoping to make stronger. She used to get these...these spells? She would scream at nothing and ask why it wasn’t helping her, why she couldn’t control it. When I asked her about it, she just said that they crippled their uncontrollable weapon for having an eternally young puppet.” 

“She was an enhanced,” Clint said, startling at his own words. “A mutant, like Xavier’s kids.”

“I don’t know,” Bucky said, shrugging helplessly. “Whatever she was, the serum get rid of it.”

“But what she said, that made you remember?” Steve asked. 

“Yes,” Bucky said, completely certain. How often had those words brought him back to himself in the past? 

“What did she say?” Natasha asked. The woman had put aside her file and fixed him with the weight of her attention. “It’s important if this is temporary or if HYDRA manages to get past our defenses.” She meant it was important if the Soldier took over. Part of Bucky was grateful for Natasha, cripplingly grateful. Another wanted to hold onto those words, guard them jealously, because they were his. Yet another part, a small splinter of himself, remembered Coney Island and the Soldier taking his orders. 

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want,” Steve said. Bucky was almost tired of that hesitantly supportive tone. 

“Yes, he does,” Stark said, fixing Bucky with a no-nonsense glance over the top of his StarkPad. Bucky could almost feel the annoyance rising up in Steve, the challenge ready to go. Steve, Bucky had come to find in the short time he’d been in the Tower, took nearly everything Stark said as a challenge, even when it was well meant. Bucky still had to work that out, but right now, it didn’t really matter. 

“My name is James Buchannon Barnes. I am a good man. My best friend is Steve Rogers, and he is coming for me. She will never let me end up like her.” Bucky tasted the words carefully, remembering them in every minute detail. “At Coney Island, she said them differently, hid them. As long as its all there, I think it will work.” 

When Bucky looked up from the study he’d been making of his hand, the room had gone silent. Banner seemed lost in thought. Clint was studying his arrowhead, clutched so tightly in his fingers that Bucky could see the start of a fine line of blood blossoming in the pad of his thumb. Natasha and Tony were staring at him openly, as if something more had been revealed in those words. Steve, though, Bucky couldn’t look at Steve. 

He had a moment, but the utterly destroyed look there had forced his eyes elsewhere. 

“I left you there,” Steve said several quite minutes later. “God, Buck I never meant—”

“Not your fault, punk,” Bucky said, cutting him off before his mind could go down the road of self-depreciation any further. “You were otherwise engaged.” Bucky tried to smile, but the thought of Steve buried beneath snow and eyes was nauseous. 

“You were working very hard to become a human bomb pop,” Stark said, and Bucky could have kissed him, if only because it made Steve bristle instead of look like someone had murdered his puppy. “What I want to know is why was it important that you didn’t end up like her?” The question was unsettling, now that Stark had asked it. 

“She didn’t want me to forget, I guess.” If he was telling the truth, Bucky didn’t really know. 

“Is it going to be worth finding her?” Stark asked, and something in Bucky roared at that. It wasn’t the Soldier, but it was just as unyielding. “Not the getting her away from HYDRA part, Barnes, just the...is it worth living a life if you don’t know who you are? what you like or don’t like? I mean...she’s been there for how long? Is there even anything left to find?” 

“It is,” Natasha said quietly. “If she is strong, it is.” They all sat in silence for a long while after that. Clint had reached out and taken Natasha’s legs and draped them over his lap, pulling her closer so that her side was nearly pressed against his front. It was eerie, Bucky thought, the way the two of them seemed to know what the other needed without words. He smiled at them as Natasha took the arrowhead from Clint’s fingers and wiped away the line of blood. Or it was sickly sweet. 

“She’s strong enough,” Bucky said after a long while. “You don’t have to help, but I’ve got to—” Bucky was cut off by the thwack of a file against the back of his head. He hadn’t heard Bruce get up and walk past him toward the kitchen, but the report snapping into the back of his head wasn’t ignored. 

“Anyone want tea?” Bruce asked, ignoring Bucky’s words completely. The rest seemed inclined to do the same. He sat there as Bruce made tea and Stark bickered with Steve about something. Natasha and Clint were speaking in hushed, clipped sentences, their faces giving away the nature of their whispers. 

He smiled down at his hands, both the flesh hand and the metal one. He’d felt this at home once, he knew, with the Commandos—and Duggan did smell that bad, thank you very much—but it was different there in the Tower. 

\--A Whole Person--

Bucky had been walking around the city as much as possible, taking runs along the Hudson, participating in small team missions, even going so far as to appear on talk show with Steve. All in all, he was as in the public eye as he could manage. The world rejoiced at his return to the living, but still, HYDRA was silent. 

Steve didn’t seem to understand what Bucky was doing, or if he did, he was ignore it. Every time when Bucky came back into Avengers Tower unfettered by HYDRA, he felt like he was losing. Bruce picked up on it immediately, giving him measuring looks each time they felt. It took Clint and Natasha a little longer, but now Clint went with him on grocery runs or walks to re-learn the city. Natasha shadowed him on his runs, saying that she needed extra practice to keep up with Steve. 

Tony hadn’t said anything, hadn’t given any indication that he knew other than the little blinking piece that he’d soldered into the arm the first time Bucky’d come back. 

_“I didn’t think there was any more maintenance,” Bucky said, sitting in Stark’s lab. He’d only been back in the Tower five minutes before JARVIS had calmly informed him that he was being directed to Master Stark’s lab and that no, it could not wait._

_“There isn’t,” Stark said, leaning in closer and carefully tightening down a small screw. It was a new baseplate in the arm, something that wasn’t needed but that Stark insisted upon. The only difference Bucky could see was an extra little slot that remained empty. It remained empty only until Bucky noticed it, because Stark was already sliding a small, capsule sized piece into place. A light blinked a dull blue out at him._

_“Then why am I getting extra tech?” Bucky glared down at the genius, who blinked up in surprise. While he appreciated everything Stark did for him, Bucky had a need to know exactly what was going into his arm, what was being done to it. He refused to think that it was probably a little neurotic or that it probably stemmed from being tied down and operated on until he was near a fifth robot._

_“It’s a tracker,” Stark said after quiet deliberation. “It doesn’t activate unless someone here turns it on. There’s two access codes. You need both of them to override. I can give one to Steve and one to anybody else on the team.”_

_“But you’d know them,” Bucky said. He felt like arguing simply because the genius had tried to slip it in unnoticed in the first place. Even as he was annoyed, something warm curled in his chest. Stark didn’t make open gestures, and hiding a tracking device on his teammates’ gear was probably more touching than it should have been._

_“J?” Stark called to the AI._

_“Sir has entrusted me with the creation of the activation codes. Should you verbalize the two holders, I will give them this information in a secure manner. No one will have access except for myself and our two code holders. Sir has made this clear.”_

_“Thanks, J,” Stark said, sliding the plate back into place despite having not yet gotten Bucky’s approval._

_“Anytime, Sir,” JARVIS said, tone light._

_“Alright,” Stark said, slapping Bucky on the metal forearm with exaggerated enthusiasm. “You’re free to go. Shoo. I have work to get done.”_

_Bucky had slipped off of the stool at that, left the genius to his meddling and slid into the elevator. In the quiet that followed, JARVIS spoke._

_“If Sergeant Barnes does not designate two code holders, the tracker will be rendered dysfunctional.” Bucky took that in and smiled up at the ceiling of the elevator._

_“Steve and Tony,” Bucky said, the decision made before he even thought about it._

_"Of course, Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS said, and if an AI could sound pleased, JARVIS did a pretty good job of it._

Bucky sighed as he collapsed into what he was affectionately referring to as his couch on the communal floor. It was just the right length for him to prop his head up on the arm rest and let his feet reach the other. 

Bucky had thought that HYDRA would take the first opportunity to get their asset back, but it seemed he was forgotten, at least for the time being. It was aggravating, to say the least. He couldn’t sleep most nights. His stomach refused food and spit acid up his throat. 

HYDRA had always sent Sweetling after him immediately. They never waited, and with three weeks come and gone since Coney Island, Bucky was more than worried. He’d gone as far as wandering the seedier parts of the docks, and yet, he wasn’t bothered by anyone other than a guy trying to sell him a river cruise.

Bucky sighed again, closed his eyes, and willed himself to sleep on the couch. It might serve him better than his bed. Hours later, he still couldn’t sleep, but unlike usual, everyone else in the Tower seemed to be getting their shut-eye. 

Natasha and Clint were absent from the common room and the range, and it was only after he checked the gym that he remembered they were both gone on a below-the-table mission for the still floundering SHIELD. Bruce, when Bucky sought him out, was sleeping slumped over a table in his lab while a timer was counting down on one of his machines in the corner. Tony’s lab was empty, and when he asked JARVIS told him that Sir had been asleep for the last three hours. Bucky slipped halfway into Steve’s room only to find the man curled up on his stomach, half of his giant body dangling off the right side of the bed. 

Bucky smiled in the dark. Steve had always slept like that, as if there wasn’t enough room. Back when Steve was scrawny and he shared Bucky’s bed for warmth, there hadn’t been. Now, even with post-serum Steve, there was enough room on the monstrosity Stark called a bed to fit three super soldiers.

Not wanting to wake anyone up with noise from the gym, Bucky did what he usually found Clint doing: watching the city from the roof. The city after dark was like a high speed solar system. Lights blinked and twinkled and shot across a backdrop so dark that it would have been maddening without those shots of brightness. 

“You need to be more careful.” The voice didn’t really startle him. It was too soft for that, too familiar and controlled. 

“You know who I am?” he asked without turning. 

“If I didn’t, you’d be dead or back at base,” she said. After a few long moments, she settled beside him against the lip of the building. They stared down at the night for a long while. “You’re going to have to put me down.” 

He did look at her after that. She was the same as he remembered. Lanky. Dark haired. Pale with a scar marring the left corner of her mouth. Blue eyed. The eyes were the only thing that was the same when the Soldier’s eyes were confused and he saw a little girl. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. 

“Yes, you are,” she said, the corner of her mouth quirking up as if it was funny. There was a blade in her hand then, pulled from a shield at her thigh. It was small but wickedly sharp and pointed. The Soldier recognized it immediately as one of his own. “Put me down or they’ll keep sending me. Eventually, they’re going to realize it’s not Sweetling they’re sending out.” 

“So don’t go back,” Bucky said, reaching out and taking the dagger before she could do any damage with it. He didn’t fear she’d turn it against him, but the Soldier was on edge seeing it. Bucky didn’t know what the programming would do if she slashed at him with it. 

“They’re not going to give up a second Asset, and I have nowhere else to go,” she said, dismissing the thought. “You remember?” 

“I remember,” he said. “Thank you for that.” In the dark, it was easy to pretend like they were back in the cell, talking easily about things that didn’t matter, things that weren’t as heavy as this.

“Welcome,” she said, nodding in acknowledgement. “Steve came for you.” 

“I came for him,” Bucky said. “He was the mission. He knew me, and I knew him but didn’t know how.” 

“You do now,” she said, those words oddly comforting. 

“I do,” he agreed. “He’s here, you know. You want to come in and meet him?” It was a ploy, he knew. He also knew she was right. It was a blow, losing the Soldier. It would be crippling to have another Asset disappear, especially the one designed to bring him back. 

“They’re only sending me, right now. They don’t want you dead; they want you back. Sweetling is the only thing that brings you back, Barnes. Eliminate the threat.” Her eyes turned from the city scape and dropped to the dagger in his hand. 

“You aren’t a threat.”

“But she is.” It was true enough, he supposed. Sweetling, the little girl that could whisper his name and ask for his help and have him following her across countries if she wanted, was a threat to Bucky Barnes, to his freedom. 

“What happens if I kill you?” he asked. It was more to waist time than an actual question. 

“If the Soldier kills Sweetling, it will be considered a breakdown in core programming. The Soldier will be considered lost. You’re too dangerous to make an enemy of, Barnes.” She paused, as if considering the options. “They won’t expend any other assets to bring you back.” 

“What happens if you don’t go back?” 

“They hunt me down, put me in the Chair, and send me back,” she said, as if it was fact. 

“And if they can’t get to you?” 

“The only reason they’d stop coming after you is if they thought the programming, what they made you, was flawed. If they think Bucky Barnes is in the driver’s seat, that you’re in control, they’ll keep sending people, James. If they can keep their Soldier, they will. HYDRA survived Captain America on your back. That isn’t forgotten.” 

“What if you failed? What if I don’t come back—”

“Then it would be a failure in the Sweetling, in my programming, not yours. The only programming you have regarding her is to protect her, to follow her, mindlessly and without question. The only way she fails is if I fail or your programming erodes to nothing.” 

“I’m not going to kill you,” Bucky said, flipping the dagger from his flesh hand to the metal hand, taking the blade and squeezing it tight, until it was bent and useless. 

“You think that you can just ignore this?” she asked, voice sharp and edged in anger. “You think I have to be in front of you for the triggers to work? for you to become that mindless Soldier again?” She glared down at the city. “You think it was only me that put triggers in your head? Mine were far more benevolent than theirs, Barnes. Right now, they want this done quietly. If they think they can get you back by triggering the programming, they will. Only they might not send me. They might pay off one of those TV personalities to say the right words in the right order when James Barnes and Steve Rogers are sitting on their sofa on national television. Tell me what happens then, Barnes.” 

 

“I don’t know,” he said simply. And he didn’t. The Soldier had been unpredictable since the Triskellion. He’d pulled Steve out of the river. He’d learned about the Commandos. He’d held up a ferris wheel at Coney Island just to save some kids. 

“I’ll tell you what happens. Bucky Barnes murders his best friend and everyone on the set of CNN on live television.” 

There wasn’t anything to say to that, not really. She was right, after all. The Asset was valuable. If there were triggers still hiding in his mind, the only way to make them stop sending someone would be to make them think the Asset was still in control, that the Soldier programming was flawed and he was revolting, not James Barnes. James Barnes was dangerous, but the Soldier was deadly. The Soldier could bring the organization down around their heads.

“So you want me to kill you to send a message.” It wasn’t a question. She’d said as much. She’d handed him the blade. 

“The Soldier would never kill Sweetling. They think they sent her out, not me.” 

“If you can overcome the programming like that, then why won’t you listen to me?” It didn’t make sense in his mind. There was no reason to die when she could control Sweetling like he could control the Soldier. She refused to look at him, and in a flash of realization, he’d won. 

“You want to die,” he said, staring down at the ruined blade. “You’d rather die than work toward fixing what they did.” 

“Would it be easier if I made enough noise to call your friends up here and trigger you? I’m not above that, Bucky. You told them how to bring you back. You had to. It was too important not to let them know.”

“I won’t—”

“Did you tell them?” She was angry then, in his face and putting pressure where she knew it would hurt him. “Because if you didn’t, you’re more of a danger than the Soldier. You’ll kill them all if you didn’t. You want to be the reason Captain America dies? A plane crash and being turned into a glacier didn’t do it, but the pride of James Barnes might.” 

“He told us.” That did startle Bucky. Stark was standing against the door, watching them with careful eyes. Bucky could see the wrist sensors in place, just waiting for his command to call the suit. “I thought she’d be taller in person, after hearing your story.” He was playing with her, Bucky knew, and the way she tensed was familiar. Stark pushed away from the doorway, prowling forward and into the overhead lamplight. He still looked tired, Bucky noted. JARVIS had to have woken him. 

“Stark, it’s probably not the best time to be out of your suit.” 

“Your friend going to stab me with the knife you destroyed?” he asked, brushing the idea off like it was impossible. “Sorry if I don’t buy that when she’s spent the last fifteen minutes trying to convince you to kill her with it.” He paused, strolling toward Bucky, leaning out over the side of the building and glancing down at the city below. “I’m a fan of your idea, by the way. It’s a solid plan.” 

“Stark—”

“If I wasn’t a genius, I wouldn’t have come up with a better one.” The ire that had erupted low in Bucky’s stomach slipped away like the night breeze at that. “J?”

To anyone else, the one letter question wouldn’t have made sense. To Bucky, who had become familiar with JARVIS and his nickname, it was a warning. Despite it, he wasn’t ready for the Iron Man suit to rocket up from below and fold itself around the woman as she stood at the edge of the building. She struggled against it for a moment, sending both herself and the suit falling toward the pavement a hundred stories below. 

Even though he knew the suit’s repulsors would kick in, his heart still hammered in his throat, choking him until that red and gold suit flashed back to the rooftop. 

“If I may say, Sir, the Miss does not appear to be enjoying your hospitality.” The AI’s voice broadcast through the speakers in the suit. “She expresses great displeasure.” 

Bucky’s straining ears could just pick up a faint whispering from the suit, and for a moment, he wondered why Stark had thought to make it sound proof. He couldn’t think of many uses other than to keep sound in, and from the few times he’d heard Stark over the comms, he knew the man had no filter. Yet, as his mind went to grinding at the idea, he’d never heard a pained sound coming across their radios, even when the suit had been sent ass over tea kettle. 

“I don’t let just anyone in my suits, you know,” Stark said, talking to the suit, voice thick with amusement. “You should be honored.” 

“The Miss wishes to express that she would like to honor your person, Sir,” JARVIS said, and Bucky laughed at that. 

“Your plan is to give her a suit, Stark?” Bucky asked, turning away from the armor. 

“My plan is to keep her stuck in a suit until we can get a cell for her in the Tower,” Stark said, hands coming up in a placating gesture. “A nice, publicly announced cell for a woman with PTSD that was rescued from a HYDRA base and can’t recall any of her captivity.” Bucky considered that for a long moment. 

“They’ll keep coming,” he said, the reality of what she’d said settling into his mind like a weight. They would threaten everything that he’d collected here, in this life, as Bucky Barnes after the Winter Soldier. His stomach revolted. The world offered him death. The death of his current family or the death of someone he owed more than he could ever repay. 

“Let them,” Tony said, shrugging as if it didn’t matter. “HYDRA is scattered, Barnes. We’re the Avengers. We’ve got two super soldiers, a state of the art suit, two top-of-their-field assassins and a Hulk. I’d like to see them rip this apart.” There was a fierceness there that Bucky hadn’t seen in Stark before, a sharp edge that promised something dark and malevolent. 

Bucky vaguely remembered the tabloids from before Tony Stark had been Iron Man, back when they called him by a different moniker. 

“Sir, the Miss would like me to inform you that you are not considering all possibilities and are...” JARVIS paused, as if he was considering what was being said inside the suit. “Well, Sir, suffice it that Miss does not feel you are capable of making promises where HYDRA is concerned.” 

“Is she swearing? Come on, JARVIS, I give you permission to speak freely,” Tony said, the edge gone from him.

“I will not be repeating the exact words, Sir,” JARVIS said, voice as exasperated as an AI could get. 

“Tell Miss Attitude that we faced down an alien invasion. I think we can handle a little spy organization. Take her to the Hulk’s playground, J. I’ll be down shortly.” The suit obeyed without question, and for a fraction of a moment, Bucky felt sorry for the woman trapped inside. She had never liked to be confined; the manacles they bound them in had chaffed more than her wrists. If it meant that he kept his promise to an old friend and stay with his new family though, Bucky was more than willing to let her suffer for a few minutes.


	6. Interrogation Techniques

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first sickening glimpses of Barnes/Stark/Rogers, though it's mostly Barnes/Stark and Rogers/Barnes with a little bit of Natasha, Clint and Sweetling nausea just watching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting again today, as I won't be able to for 2-3 days after this. Updates will be slowing down to once or twice a week, as a broken hand is difficult to type with. Let me know what you think of this!

Chapter Six: Interrogation Techniques 

She’d been in the empty, white-walled room for the better part of three hours. It was oddly cylindrical, but the corners had all been rounded out. There were no air vents save for one in the middle of the heavy, iron door. She’d considered it for several long minutes. The door was all one piece without joint or welding, and as she looked at it, there were no hinges to be made into an escape. The door simply slid in and out of the ceiling and well into the floor.

The suit had flown her in, dumped her in a pile on the floor, and zipped out just as the door slammed shut. She’d shouted through the grate for an hour before she realized that either no one was listening or they didn’t care what they were bringing down on their heads. Stark had promised to be down, but he’d made himself a liar or stood well out of site from the grate. 

With nothing in the room she could use, she’d settled against the wall furthest from the door and waited. She’d waited for three days before sleep claimed her. HYDRA had only allowed the briefest scraps of rest between her first attempt on the Winter Soldier and this one. As she sat in the room, she’d ignored the effects of sleep deprivation 

At two days, the hallucinations started, shadows in a perfectly lit room, people at the grate that couldn’t be, the sound of the lash. She pressed her back against the wall more firmly and refused to let her eyes follow the sensory overload. Just before her mind shut down for the last time on day three, she was blinking and startling awake microseconds later, confused for several long seconds before she remembered where she was. The last time, she simply didn’t startle herself awake. 

When she woke, the room was not empty as it had been. Across from her, leaning against that metal door, was Steve Rogers. 

CODE NAME: CAPTAIN AMERICA  
ALLIANCE: SHIELD  
ALIASES: STEVE ROGERS, CAPTAIN ROGERS _—STEVIE, PUNK—_  
WEAKNESS: SUBJECT TO EXPLOITATION, COERCION  
TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT: TERMINATE ON SIGHT

She knew the file like she knew James Barnes. The man could snap her neck with little more than a twist of a wrist, and yet, if he had intended to kill her, he’d have done it immediately, that first day. He wouldn’t have waited, let her sleep and slip into her cage while she was disoriented. That would have raged against his moral compass. 

“Bucky says you don’t remember you name,” he said, staring straight upward, as if the empty, white-washed ceiling was somehow startlingly interesting. “He says they called you Sweetling.”

“The Asset is known as Sweetling,” she confirmed, even though it rankled her to admit it. She didn’t know her name, not her real one anyway, and in all the years between then and now and all of the time between birth and death, she could not find a name that seemed to slip into her skin as if she owned it. 

“You aren’t the asset though; if you were, you’d never had done what you did for Bucky.” He was looking at her then, and for the life of her and all of her training, she could not ignore the weight of his eyes. Bucky had told her about Steve Rogers all those years ago, and the two men he described were both too good to be real in their own ways. 

Pre-Serum Steve, Bucky told her, was bright-eyed and iron-willed with a backbone so strong that it could stand against the world, even if the rest of him was falling apart around it. Post-Serum Steve Rogers was the epitome of the male physique with military training but a compassionate streak that made him the perfect balance between soldier and civilian. In both versions, his well-deep, ocean-blue eyes were present, and she felt their weight, even without looking at him. 

“What I did, I did for an old friend,” she said. “That old friend has decided to spit upon that gift and the promise I made him.” 

“He’s honoring your friendship,” Rogers countered, a flare of annoyance in his tone of voice. Good, she’d need any advantage she could get.

“He’s going to honor all of your heads with his rifle once they trigger him,” she said. “And when I manage to bring him back to himself, he’ll honor your graves with his tears if he doesn’t kill himself.” 

“I don’t think he could kill all of us before we brought him back,” Steve said with a shake of his head. 

“Think what you’d like Captain Rogers,” she said, closing her eyes against the weight of his stare. “HYDRA won’t let The Soldier and His Sweetling go without a fight, even if they are broken and hiding.” 

“His Sweetling?” Steve asked, voice surprised. She smirked at that, rolling her eyes behind closed lids. To Steve Rogers, it sounded different than it was, she supposed. Men out of time had a tendency to take words with more meaning. She’d spent too long in the world to know that words, no matter what they were, meant little. 

“They liked to call us that,” she said easily. “Barnes and I kept each other sane for a long time before they made the Chair and took him away.” 

“Took him away but not you,” Steve said, voice almost accusing, as if he couldn’t parse together in his mind why they hadn’t simply kept wiping away at her mind like they had Bucky’s. She let him carry on his thought process. It was safer, after all, to think that. 

“I was already a loose cannon. They’d had me a long time, and their experiments had already cut the balls from my abilities, from their weapon.”

“Your enhanced abilities,” Steve clarified. 

“They liked to call me enhanced, yes,” she said. “There were lots of names for it back then.” She could just make out the shadow of something passing behind the grate beside Steve’s head. She wondered, for a moment, if it was Bucky, but she always had known where the Soldier was, even on the other side of steel plating. It was how she found him over the years. A flash of red told her who stood there, and after a moment, she made her decision. 

“You aren’t the interrogator here, Rogers. Tell Widow if she’d like to speak with Sweetling, she can come in and test her metal.” It wasn’t a challenge. Not really. In a physical fight, Widow would beat the shit out of her long enough for back up to arrive. Black Widow was still safer than Steve Rogers. She’d heard too much about Captain America, and the softening of her edge would not do.

Challenge or not, Widow rose to it, slipping through the door like a wraith on silent feet and nudging Rogers with her shoulder. 

“Out,” she said, not looking away from the Asset. This kind of scrutiny, the kind where she was being weighed and judged, was comforting; it was familiar. As Steve’s questioning eyes slid over her one more time, she was pleased that he was leaving. 

As soon as the door locked into place again, Natasha was in front of her, in her space, limiting room to run and making it nearly impossible to see anything but her. It was a strong tactic, but an obvious one, and not the one the other woman was really using. 

“If you cause a problem, I’m going to snap your neck,” Natasha said. 

“I gave Barnes a blade and told him to end a threat, Widow. Don’t think I’m afraid to die by your hand if I’m not afraid to die by the Soldier’s.” If anything, her words got Widow out of her face, a few steps back and at a more acceptable distance to the Asset. 

“Are you dangerous?” Widow asked, staring down at her with sharp eyes. The programming didn’t miss the muffled shifting noises on the other side of the door or the quick shadowed passes of someone behind the grate. The programming didn’t miss much anymore. It was only thrown off when the damned—

“Yes,” she said, not fighting the quirk of a smile at the corner of her mouth. Talking was safe. The Sweetling only spoke so many words, so many phrases. This, whoever she was now, was safe as long as she was talking.

“Are you dangerous to anyone here?” Widow said, changing the question. It didn’t matter. The answer was always yes. She was always dangerous. Did that mean she could kill the Widow? Not with at least one super soldier on the other side of that door. Not with the way Bucky looked at her like family. She bit into her tongue, enjoying the sweet copper taste and sucking on it as a distraction. Pain was safer than words. “Are you?” The repeated question had to have been louder, but she didn’t hear it. 

There was a place in a person’s mind, a shadowed little cave that their mind could curl up inside and simply disappear. It had been all the home she’d had for decades, and now, she retreated there, away from the interrogation. Away from the questions. Pain lived in that cave. It made up the walls and the ground, the very air breathed. Pain had never abandoned her until that moment.

It was pain that brought her out, sharp and stinging, rolling through her in waves, washing from head to toe and back again. 

“Natasha!” The voice was familiar, but through electric song in her veins and the rush of blood in her ears, she couldn’t make her mind place it. The face in front of her a few moments later she could, though, even with all that extra hair and the cool press of a metal hand against her face. 

“You’ve got good friends, Barnes,” she said when her tongue stopped seizing and her diaphragm cooperated enough to not make little grunting moans slide up her throat. Her thigh and abdominal muscles still jumped, but she sat herself up, propped herself against the wall, and rolled her head back until she could stare at the Black Widow over Bucky’s shoulder. 

“Are you?” Widow asked. 

“That’s enough, Nata—”

The blade was from the sheath on Bucky’s thigh and spinning through the air before he finished the name. It slipped against Widow’s cheek in a caress before slamming into the wall above the door, embedding just enough to not fall to the ground. 

“If I was, you’d be dead,” she said. Warm blood fell from the corner of her mouth as she spoke, either from when she’d bitten her tongue on purpose or from the seizing that came with electrocution, she didn’t know. She was quietly pleased when a thin line of blood bubbled up on Widow’s cheek and spilled down to her jawline. The assassin didn’t seem to notice as she stared down. 

“Barnes,” Widow said. “Barnes, leave.” 

“Like hell I’m going to leave!” he raged, standing and turning, facing down Natasha as if she was the threat. “This isn’t an interrogation.” His voice had dropped into that dull, dangerous tone that the Asset knew came from the same place as the Soldier. 

“Barnes,” she tried to gain his attention, but his back remained turned to her. “Barnes!” She kicked at the back of his knee half-heartedly. Her legs still didn’t want to cooperate. He did not waver. “Soldier!” she snapped, and as if he’d been the one electrocuted, he flinched away from the pair of them to put his own back to a wall. 

“Bucky?” The tone Widow used was softer, though The Asset only recognized it because she was looking for it. 

“You’re alright,” Sweetling said, ignoring the spasms in her back as she stood. It was only luck that kept her on her feet as the metal hand closed around her throat a short second later, pinning her to the wall but not squeezing. 

“Never do that again,” he hissed between his teeth, staring down at her as though she ought to have known better. 

“If I was going to trigger you, I’d have done it on the roof,” she said, looking pointedly down at his hand. “You act like the Soldier, Sweetling will treat you like it.” The hard lines of his face disappeared, and the metal arm retreated to hang at his side. He tipped his head to the side, as if considering something, and then nodded. The flesh hand came up, pinned her neck to the wall again and squeezed just hard enough to know he meant it. 

“That’s better,” she said, tapping his arm twice. He dropped it with a smile and a shake of his head. “Bucky Barnes wants to snap at his new little family, that’s fine. The Soldier does it, and you’re ruining all my work.” 

“Yeah, yeah, Edna,” he said, turning away from her. It was an old game, one that they’d played in the quiet hours spent in their cell. She had no name, so he gave her hundreds, maybe even a thousand in the days between when he was first shoved through the door until the day he was taken out the last time.

“Not the name I’d pick.” Everyone but Natasha jumped at Stark’s voice. “Something younger, flashier. Your options are limitless.” Bucky only chuckled at that and slid down the wall to the floor. Sweetling copied the gesture, nudging him with her knee as she brought it to her chest. 

“You’ve got good friends, Barnes.”

“One of them just electrocuted you,” he argued, still glaring up at Natasha, who stood in the middle of the room, only a few paces in front of Stark, unfettered by his dark glances. 

“I threw a knife at her face,” Sweetling said with a little shrug. Barnes just let his head lean back against the wall and chuckled under his breath. “Doesn’t change anything, you being in here.” 

“A bit bigger than our last cell,” he said instead of answering. “Plus, no chains.” 

“You don’t listen to me and you’ll see them again soon,” Sweetling promised. There was a dull echoing rush in her ears, like the ocean through a seashell. She could still hear Steve Rogers shifting in the doorway though, and two more men behind him, watching. 

“You never had a problem controlling the Sweetling programming before,” Barnes said, as if remembering something. “When I was just me. Before the Soldier, you didn’t—”

“Things change, Bucky,” she said, cutting him off before his mind could wander. 

“No, they don’t,” he argued, tipping his head enough to look at her. “You were supposed to make me agreeable long before the Winter Soldier started running.” 

“I am an old woman; consider my slipping as a sign of my tragic dementia.” 

“You always were a terrible liar,” he said, pushing against the wall to stand.

“If I prove to you that no HYDRA force is getting in here, would you consider ending your tireless campaign for suicide?” Stark asked, jarring Sweetling from her study of the ground. She glanced up at the man. He was all sound and shine, with a core of something that she could respect. The way his eyes flickered over Bucky Barnes was not lost on her though, not even when she was stuck in another cell. 

She stared at the pair for a long moment, eyes flickering back and forth between the two men. Bucky had turned to look at Stark with a soft appreciation, the lines around his eyes disappearing for a moment. Stark simply nodded back, that billion dollar smile slipping briefly to be replaced with something genuine, something—

“Oh, I’m going to vomit,” she muttered, the words slipping past her lips before she knew she was going to say them. She rolled her head on her shoulders, forward toward her knees, and it was only for a flickering instant, but she saw the smirk on Widow’s face, her sharp eyes cut across to look at the pair. 

“You have no idea, yet,” Widow said, and Sweetling just buried her head between her knees and ignored the worried hovering of the only friend she remembered. 

\--A Whole Person--

As it turned out, she was not to be kept in the cell, which served her purposes well enough. Sweetling couldn’t escape from a bubble, but she could from a Tower where people came and went nearly every minute of the day. 

Bucky had taken to escorting her to where she was being taken, which turned out to be a lab, buried somewhere in the upper levels of the Tower. There were odds and ends littered everywhere, pieces of burned metal that could be made into weapons. 

She had no need for weapons though, not at the moment. Not with Bucky watching her watching the metal. 

“Your only reasoning for asking Terminator to stick you with the pointy end is that you think HYDRA is going to come after him,” Stark said as she was settled onto a stool at a desk. There were too many references there for her mind to sort. HYDRA didn’t condone the gathering of unnecessary intelligence, but she had caught glimpses of the world despite their insistence. She existed at all despite their existence. 

“For a tortured, amnesiac without any family, friends or resources other than the organization that made me all those things, I’d really rather keep on living,” she said, spitting the words. The billionaire took it in stride, slapping his hands together and gesturing toward the ceiling. 

“Hit it, J,” he said. 

“Avengers tower is fifty-five stories of community based outreach facilities. Clinics. Youth centers. Tutoring facilities. Daycares.” The AI paused a moment. “The next twenty floors are dedicated to the Avengers private dealings and day-to-day life. The bottom fifty-five floors are protected by security cameras and armed sentries on each level, though these are not capable of withstanding anything more than a scuffle between angry teenagers.” 

“J, not helping,” Tony groused at the AI, who did not sound at all ashamed when he next spoke. 

“The top twenty floors are significantly more protected, with myself managing security on all levels including heat signature monitoring, pulse monitoring, pressure sensor flooring and automatic defense mechanisms which Sir has provided and several of the team have tested.” The AI paused for a moment, as if debating his next words. “Currently, Agent Barton holds the record for going un-noticed in the upper levels for exactly three minutes and twenty-seven—

“Twenty-eight, JARVIS.” The voice was new, but she did not turn to see who owned it. 

“Twenty-seven seconds,” JARVIS continued, ignoring the reprimand and the hurt huff of breath from the man still behind her. “The oversight that allowed this has been rectified and Agent Barton has been unable to recreate the parameters of this experiment.”

“Safe in your Tower, is that what you’re preaching?” she asked. “Unless you plan on living in here and never leaving, your plan has more flaws than—”

“Than your plan of making the enemy think that the Winter Soldier was sick of staying on leash?” Stark was almost angry now, leaning over the table toward her. It was a gesture meant to intimidate, one she recognized in the Handlers. 

“If the programming is flawed, there’s no reason to believe they would keep wasting assets,” she said, annoyed at his power play. 

“I’m a programmer, dollface,” Stark said. “You know what I do when a program doesn’t work? I hunt it down, I find where the flaw is, and I fix it.” 

“The Soldier is a danger. They won’t waste their limited resources on bringing him back if they don’t think it will work.” 

“Then why are you here?” 

“Because I’ve never failed to bring him back!” she snapped, standing up fast enough to send the stool clattering back to the tile floor. Bucky had a restraining hand on her shoulder, trying to calm her. “Because that’s the only thing I’m supposed to be able to do! Bucky Barnes. Winter Soldier. It’s never mattered because he would follow me either way. Sweetling brings the Soldier back, that’s what she does. I bring Barnes back. It’s—

“I’m not following you back to HYDRA, Florence,” Bucky said, gripping her shoulder hard enough to bring pain to the front of her mind. She gripped onto it with scrabbling, greedy hands. Pain was calming. 

“Yes,” she said simply, shoulders falling in calm, if not defeat. “By not taking the out you’ve been offered, you are, just not as fast as the Soldier.” The room fell silent at that, no one knowing what to say to argue. 

“In the security feed from the roof, you said that you had to trigger him to bring him back.” Mr. New Voice was calm, level headed, and spoke with an almost hesitant tone. “What if those triggers no longer existed?” 

She did turn then. He was an unimposing man with grey in his hair and an almost bashful face. His body language shifted under her scrutiny as he turned sideways, making himself a smaller target. 

“I’m HYDRA,” she spat the words, their taste acid on her tongue. “I’m not putting him back in the Chair—”

“Deconditioning,” Widow said from a few paces away, where she leaned in the doorway with a sharp-eyed man that had to be Agent Barton. Widow’s eyes flickered up to him. “Cognitive recalibration.” 

He looked pained for an instant before realization sparked in his face. Sweetling’s eyes flickered away as he leaned down and kissed her soundly. 

“No PDA in my workshop!” Stark shouted, though it was more of a cat call than anything else. 

“You are a brilliant, terrifying woman,” Agent Barton said. “We trigger him on purpose.” 

“You what?” Steve asked, his voice a huff of indignation. 

“We trigger him on purpose. We pull out every last thing HYDRA has in his mind, and we do it over and over again until it doesn’t mean anything anymore.” 

Sweetling had to stop at that, considering the option, weighing it. They all had the words to return him to Bucky Barnes, words that should still work through the triggers of the Sweetling or any other that HYDRA had embedded in his mind. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Rogers said, coming to stand by Bucky, as if it was by his presence alone that he could protect the man. “What are the odds it would work?” 

“Decent.” It was the soft spoken man that said this, glancing at Tony over their heads. “You have my playground. He wouldn’t get out of there, even if we couldn’t calm him down quickly.” 

“I’d have to make a few adjustments, it’d take a few hours, tops.” 

“The door locking mechanisms would have to be looked over. You’d have to work intelligence into the design, not just brute strength.”

They were firing exchanges quickly, the idea already cemented in their minds, and Sweetling turned toward Bucky as they spoke. Eyes vaguely empty, staring off toward the wall. His hand had tightened down on her shoulder hard enough that it threatened to dislocate if she moved too quickly. 

“Barnes,” she said, trying to startle him. The soft sound drew Steve’s attention, who was standing giving his friend’s shoulder a little shake. “Your name is James Buchannon Barnes.” 

“I am a good man,” he said, releasing her shoulder with a smile and nod. “I’m alright. I wasn’t—”

“I know.” 

“How?” he asked, studying her with a pouty frown. 

“We’re all not dead,” she said simply. 

“Not yet.” 

“Sweetling once got the Soldier out of a mine shaft in the Appalachians in the dead of winter with open explosives laying around in barrels,” she said, meeting his eyes. “I think I can do better than that.” 

“You think this is a good idea?” Steve asked, mostly to Bucky. 

“No,” he said with a shrug, but that smile was back on his face. The pair’s eyes met, and the softening to both of them was just as nauseating as it had been between Barnes and Stark. 

“Oh, god, not you too,” she muttered, turning away from the pair on instinct. It was Barton that met her disgusted face with amusement this time. 

“She saw Stark and Barton earlier?” he asked the Widow, who simply smirked. He looked back up at Sweetling. “Welcome to Avengers Tower. Dysfunctional family fun for adults and children of all ages.”


	7. A Bad Idea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first and second attempts at the de-conditioning of Bucky Barnes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had a hard time writing this, not really sure why. I still don't much care for the first half. Though I will say that Natasha is a saucy minx who deserves more credit.

Chapter Seven: A Bad Idea

Bucky had been sitting in the middle of the Hulk’s playground for the last three hours, just staring out at the emptiness between him and one of the white walls. 

To say that their first attempt at working through one of his triggers was a disaster would be an insult to disasters world wide. 

_“There are approximately a dozen triggers that will alter the behavior of the Asset,” Sweetling said, standing in front of Bucky. They’d decided that any conversation concerning triggering the Soldier should be done in the Hulk’s panic room, where he could be contained, if not controlled._

_Steve paced uncomfortably a few steps away, as close as Bucky would allow him. Natasha and Clint flanked her, cutting off any chance of escape, though the Iron Man armor in front of the door did that just as well. The armor had been a request from Bucky, and after little argument, Stark had caved._

_“Two of them are blank slate triggers,” she said, speaking quickly, trying to push their way through this sooner rather than later. “The first will revert you to what is left of James Barnes.”_

_“Wait, what—”_

_“The second will take you down to the blank programming of the Soldier. It’s not as effective as the Chair, but it’s close.”_

_“What do you mean what’s left of James Barnes?” Steve asked again, his voice loud enough that ignoring it would be a bad idea._

_“I mean that the person in front of you is a program,” she said simply. “We programmed him to remember what was important to him then. Everything that he remembers now he remembers because he told himself it was important while we were in that cell. That is who James Barnes was then, but he’s still in there, somewhere. You’re going to have to reconcile the two of them eventually.”_

_“But...” Steve’s eyes slid over to Bucky, the Bucky that remembered him, the one that was uncomfortable but aware enough to give Steve a reassuring smile._

_“Last,” Bucky said, fixing Sweetling with a firm look that was answered with a nod. “The other triggers?”_

_“One for the Sweetling,” she said, self-loathing evident in the name. “It’s what we’ll start with.”_

_“Why that one?” Clint asked, eyes sharp, as if he could almost see something important in the set of her shoulders._

_“Because the Sweetling programming has the best chance of retrieving the Soldier than any tactical team. It also is the only way to do so without casualties. If they decide that I’ve been around too long and make a new version, I want to make sure he doesn’t follow that little girl. It won’t be easy for him. The programming worked because James Barnes wanted to help the little girl first and the Soldier followed him. There also aren’t any specific words, it’s just a feeling, a way of speaking.”_

  _“How?” Steve asked, a little lost._

_“I trigger him,” she said, eyes flicking to Natasha. It had been Romanov’s plan, afterall._

_“She triggers him, and we watch the first time. Recon work. We see if we can’t bring him back, walk his mind through a pathway that would lead him to himself again. If we can’t, we bring him back with the trigger. Then it’s pretty much rinse and repeat, Captain.”_

_“When do we start?” Stark asked, uncrossing his arms and widening his stance in the suit, taking up the expanse of the door, making himself larger. Sweetling fixed Bucky with a questioning look. Barnes nodded, and she sighed._

_“Now,” she said simply, crouching down in front of Bucky, who was seated back against the wall._

_“Soldier?” Her voice had changed. She’d changed. The firm set of her spine was gone, curling in as if to defend herself. The voice was smaller, thready like a child’s, questioning and almost desperate. She was a child, lost in a crowd in that moment. “Soldier? Are you a good Soldier? Daddy says I can trust the Soldier.”_

_Steve watched Bucky sharply, stepping closer as his eyes went glassy, looking past what was in front of him, toward something no one else could see. His hands dropped from his up drawn knees to the ground. Nervous tension fled his body only to be replaced by an on-edge awareness of the world around him._

_Steve stopped pacing, standing off a few feet, jaw slack and forehead drawn together in a pained upturn of eyebrows._

_“That’s all it takes?” he whispered. The sound was enough. The Soldier’s eyes snapped up to Steve, flickered over to Romanov and Barton and finally Stark in the door. The assessment of the room took less than a second, and in the next, he had reached out, gripped the Sweetling’s arm, and pulled her behind him._

_The attack hadn’t been unexpected, but Steve still hadn’t been ready for the metal arm that gripped his throat, pushing him into a wall and upward, cutting off the flow of air and blood. Red lips strained against a name, unable to get it out._

_Natasha cut the feet from beneath him; Barton pinning him by the thighs as Stark laid the armor over his torso._

_“You are James Buchannon Barnes,” Sweetling said, her voice no longer that sickly sweet tone of a child. “You are a good man. Your best friend is Steve Rogers—”_

_“Steve?” Bucky asked, cutting off her words and going lax, his eyes searching for the man. Stark was the first one off of the man, putting the sentinel of the armor back in the doorway. Barton and Romanov followed quickly, though with ore hesitance. Bucky didn’t sit up, he simply stared at the ceiling, waiting. “Steve?” he asked again._

_“Kay, Buck,” Steve said, his voice hoarse and strained._

_“Well, that went well.” Bruce’s voice cut through the PA system. “Steve, come on out, and I’ll take a look at that.”_

Bucky sighed, picking at the knee of his jeans. Steve was fine. Sweetling had told him that almost immediately, but it didn’t sink in quite as well as it should have. The Super Soldier hadn’t been back since he’d walked out the door, and it was that absence that was the most uncomfortable. 

Natasha, Clint and Tony had left him there only after he’d insisted. The woman sitting a little way off against the wall hadn’t so much as responded when he’d shouted at her to leave. 

“Hey Emma?” he called softly, pulling a name from a memory of a pretty dame he’d taken dancing. 

“Barnes?” 

“The Soldier protects the Sweetling. Why?” 

She was silent for a long while. 

“Because they gave her to him to protect. She was his. She’s never hurt him. She’s the only person who’s never hurt him.” More silence. 

“What if she did?” 

\--A Whole Person--

Steve had been sitting outside the heavy steel door, leaning against it and fighting the urge to enter. Bucky’d asked for time, he’d screamed at them. Something felt dirty in the pit of his stomach, growing and darkening the longer he was outside the room. Stark was across from him, tinkering away at something on a bench, but the billionaire’s eyes flickered over Steve and the door every few minutes. 

Natasha had stepped out to take a phone call over thirty minutes ago, and Clint had followed not long ago to check on her. Bruce was still monitoring video feeds from within the control room, far enough away from any action that there’d be no accidental Code Green without a place to run to. 

“Tony?” Banner’s voice came through the comm unit in Steve’s ear. Stark straightened, cocked his head to the side and muttered a go ahead. “Something’s going on in there.” The engineer was on his feet in a moment, crossing to the door and peering through the grate. 

Inside, Sweetling was crouched in front of Barnes. In a moment, it wasn’t Barnes anymore, but the Soldier. 

“Son of a bitch,” Stark said, turning and reaching for the release lever for the door, the armor folding around him within seconds. 

Steve rose quickly, turning toward the door, waiting for the mechanism to engage and open. It took twenty seconds—an added security measure so that the process could be halted if necessary or accidentally engaged. 

Twenty seconds seemed like such a long time in the scream that followed, hoarse and hurt and so clearly Bucky that it made bile rise thick in the back of Steve’s throat. 

A grunt sounded on the other side of the door, drawing Steve’s eyes again. The Soldier had the Sweetling by the throat, pinning her to the wall, his elbow pressing down hard against her chest. Pressure, Steve knew, he was applying pressure to force air from her lungs while his hand prevented any more from entering. 

“Get this door open, Stark!” Steve shouted, fingers digging into the door jam, ripping at the flesh of his hands more than the metal. 

“Stand back,” Stark said, and that was all the warning Steve had before the door was blasted inward. He was the first through the opening, tackling the Soldier, sending Sweetling to the ground in a heap, gasping and holding her throat. 

“No!” she shouted, holding a hand up to Tony, who had come into the room in his suit. “Let him go, Captain.” He didn’t have much of a choice, as the Soldier had thrown him in the next moment and was coming toward her quickly. 

“Soldier? Soldier, why won’t you help me?” she asked in that voice, a voice that was ignored as he reached back and slammed the metal into her temple. As stars danced behind her eyes and she tried to shake off the dark splotches growing in her vision, Bruce’s voice said something over the comm system, calm and firm. 

When the metal hand didn’t fall again, she looked up, past the concussive confusion. Bucky stood there, hand gripped at his side, a look of revolted betrayal on his face that flickered to guilt and back again. “Soldier?” she murmured, making the words come. “Soldier, will you take me home?” 

It was important that she was sure, and in the quick kick that came up and connected beneath her chin, she got her assurance. 

“Bucky!” Steve shouted as the woman’s head snapped back and she collapsed against the floor, unmoving. 

“What?” he snapped, turning back toward Steve, who had gotten to his feet. Concerned blue eyes flickered from Bucky to Sweetling on the ground. Bucky followed that gaze, forehead creasing. It was easy to see the separation of the Soldier and Bucky Barnes as they flickered back and forth in his mind, control slipping without hesitation from one to the other. 

The Soldier had been betrayed. Betrayal was unacceptable. 

Bucky Barnes had taken a gift, an attempt at help, and lashed out. 

Just. As. Planned. 

“Why?” Steve had always been a man that could convey a lot with only a few words. Why did you attack her? Why did you snap? Why do you look so goddamned pleased with yourself and guilty at the same time?

“It worked,” he said simply, looking down at the unconscious woman. “She triggered me, then did something to the arm, something that—”

Barnes stopped speaking, swallowed hard, and shook his head, as if trying to clear it from the memory of whatever she’d done.  
“Jarvis, get Banner down here and run video in the HUD.” Stark’s voice startled the two men. Steve briefly glanced to the suit, half-grateful that the man had thought when he couldn’t and half-annoyed that they were interrupted. When Banner came in only a handful of minutes later with a medical bag and a portable oxygen tank, the annoyance sputtered and died. 

Tony was uncharacteristically quiet for a long while, only muttering things to Jarvis in the helmet. Steve didn’t have time to worry about him though, as Bucky was still and silent, starting down at the woman he’d knocked unconscious. 

“I like the way she plays,” Stark said after his silence, the face shield sliding up and away. “High risk, high reward. I’ll take her to a roulette table sometime.” 

“What are you talking about, Stark?” Steve asked, his Captain Disappointment scowl in place. 

“She triggered him. They planned this,” Stark said, his shrug almost comical in the suit, the gesture too big. 

“They wouldn’t—”

“It worked,” Bucky said quietly, too soft really to have been able to silence Steve with the two words, but silent Steve went, staring slack jawed at his best friend. 

“And that would be the reward,” Stark said. “She’s still alive. That’s a win in this casino.” Devastated blue eyes flickered from Bucky to Stark’s suit and down to the woman that Bruce was evaluating with clinical efficiency. 

“Bucky why would you plan this?” 

“It was my idea...I didn’t see another way to override the Sweetling programming.” 

“But we could have—”

“To be honest,” Bruce said, speaking for the first time since he’d entered the room. “It was a good plan, and it worked, which is even better. He pulled himself out of the programming at the end, he not only defended himself against Sweetling and failed to follow orders, but he also had a violent reaction to her behavior.” Banner swept a hand up over his eyes. “I’ll take it as a win.” 

“She’s—”

“Fine and completely okay with the outcome.” Sweetling was still laying on her back, eyes closed and hands limp at her sides, but her mouth was quirked up at the corner. “Good job, Barnes.” 

“I’m so—”

“Finish that sentiment and I’ll kick your ass.” She opened one eye and fixed him with a glare. “Help me up, Klondike.” Bucky scowled at the nickname but did as he was asked, pulling her to her feet and hovering for a moment when nausea and dizziness struck. 

“You’ll want to avoid any other head trauma for a few months,” Bruce said, rising with a groan and a rub at his back. “The serum in you should make the recovery quicker, but no one wants post-concussive syndrome for the rest of their unnaturally long life.” 

“This...” Steve’s voice drew their attention, and his appearance concerned everyone but Sweetling. He’d backed up a few steps, hands in front of him and splayed as if they could keep something away from him. He’d gone pale, and his mouth drew down in a deep frown. “This isn’t how we do things.”

“Steve—”

Bucky’s hurt tone and reaching hand didn’t stop the Super Soldier as he fled past him toward the door, where Tony still stood as a sentinel. Tony stepped in front of him. 

“Rogers—”

“Move, Stark,” Steve said, and when the suit didn’t shift immediately, he reached out, gripped the bicep of the suit and shoved it hard sideways. He didn’t wait to watch the suit crash into the wall or the muttered curse that came after. 

\--A Whole Person--

Natasha sighed as she climbed the final flight of stairs to gym. She wasn’t sure when she became the mother of four testosterone-driver, emotionally-stunted men that paraded around in spandex or metal, but apparently, it had happened. It probably had something to do with the fact that she always knew where to find them, not that they did a particularly good job of hiding when they were upset. 

Barton stared off the roof. 

Banner went to Central Park. 

Stark hid in his lab. 

Rogers ruined the gym. 

Her current wayward child didn’t hear the door of the gym as she slipped it closed behind her and leaned against the weight rack, watching him lay into a heavy bag with a Stark stylized A on the side. It had only taken Tony a week to come up with a polymer for the bag that wouldn’t give way, a chain to hold it and the appropriate weight to give Steve a challenge. 

Since, Steve seemed more annoyed that the bag didn’t break than when the old ones used to tear and spill sand. His hands weren’t wrapped now, and she could see the red back smeared with darker smudges. Sharp eyes flickered to the floor beneath the bag, where blood dotted the floor from his hands. 

“You’re cleaning that up,” she said simply. He startled, turning mid punch, his shoe stepping into the blood and sliding completely beneath him. Natasha couldn’t help the next words as she stared down at Captain America, flat on his ass, sitting in his own blood. “Our nation’s greatest hero and he’s undone by a slip hazard.” 

“Stark never hears about this,” Steve said, voice resigned. 

“You know that’s not going to happen.” 

“I’m never living it down,” Steve lamented with a sigh, resting his arms against his knees and hanging his head, rolling it on the axis of his neck as if to work out a pain.

“You’re hiding,” she said after a long silence. His head snapped up, eyes narrowed. 

“I am not,” he said, voice devoid of any of the authority of Captain America. Natasha sighed and sat down in front of him, legs crossed like a child on the kindergarten carpet. 

“Sweetling is fine. Bucky’s over it. Stark and Banner think it was brilliant. Clint and I can’t find fault in something that worked. So why are you here punishing everyone?” 

“I’m not punishing anyone, Natasha,” Steve said, though the defensive tone was gone, resigned to something else. “I just...we’re intentionally making him a weapon, messing with something we have no idea about, and when it works, when he’s...”

“When he’s what they made him,” she said for him. 

“When he’s that thing they made him,” Steve agreed. “We consider it a win? It’s a win that the only way he can be safe from a program someone put in his mind is to want to kill the people that trigger the program?” 

“Yes,” Natasha said, leaving no room for uncertainty in her voice. 

“He could have hurt her! He did hurt her, and he has to live with that.” 

“You hurt Stark with your temper tantrum,” Natasha said, cocking one red eyebrow at him, waiting to see how he’d react. It took a few moments of processing for the color to drain from his face. 

“What?” 

“For the helmet to actually work, the faceplate has to be engaged, otherwise his head can snap around in side the suit. Hit the wall pretty hard from the security video.” 

“Is he—”

“It’s a lost cause, Captain. He’s loud, abrasive and damningly inappropriate. We might have to amputate.” The corner of her mouth quirked up, and Steve relaxed enough to joke back. 

“What’re we amputating? His head?” 

“It’s the only way to save the rest of him,” Natasha said, arching her back in a stretch before rocking backward until she was flat on her back and then in a smooth flip of feet over head, she was on her hands, taking two fluid steps away from him before setting her feet back down on the ground. “Don’t punish Bucky because you don’t like what he has to do to survive. Don’t punish the rest of us for being willing to do whatever it takes to defend our family. It’s a shitty conglomerate of damaged people, but it’s the best one we have.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, a smile on his lips. He pushed against the floor with his palms, a curse flying from his lips when his hands slid out from beneath him, thick and slimy with congealing blood. The red head stood a few paces off, staring down at him with pursed lips. “Not a word to Stark.”

“Not a word,” Natasha agreed. “J.A.R.V.I.S?”

“Video footage has been saved and sent via e-mail, Agent Romanov.” 

“Thanks, J.”


End file.
